The Catholic doctrine of grace

SOl.I) HY

Thomas Hakkr,

72 Newman Street,

London, W. Eng,

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF
GRACE

THE

CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

OF

GRACE

BY

G. H. JOYCE, S.J

ST. BBUNO'S COLLBGB, ST. ASAPH

BURNS GATES & WASHBOURNE LTD.

LONDON

28 ORCHARD STREET, 8-10 PATERNOSTER ROW,

W. I E.G. 4

AND AT MANCHESTER, BIRMINGHAM, AND GLASGOW

1 02 O '^ii ^*i^ ii rit*rv0d

1936

^355

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i. JARVIS

ObNSOE DiPXJTATir*.

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FEANCISOUS, EP^S MENEVENSIS.

INTEODUCTION

It is very generally admitted that at the present
day there is a widespread desire among
Catholics for instruction regarding the truths of
their religion. Those preachers are the most
sought after whose sermons are known to
convey positive teaching as to the faith ; while
for the purely hortatory sermon, however good
of its kind, there is little demand. Nor is this
state of things confined to English-speaking
peoples. Even in those countries in which the
oratorical style was at one time regarded as
essential to good preaching, the more homely
instruction seems to be now largely taking its
place. The reason for this is not hard to see.
There has never, perhaps, been a time when the
Catholic religion was more canvassed and
discussed than at the present day. Men
see that it alone has held its ground unshaken
by the tremendous religious disintegration of
the nineteenth century ; that the crisis which
seemed to threaten all belief in religion has,

vi INTRODUCTION

contrary to all expectation, left it stronger than
it was before. This fact has made it an object
of deep interest alike to the unbeliever and to
the earnest seeker after truth. It is only
natural that in the circumstances Catholics
should desire to possess a clear knowledge of
what the Church teaches. Without this they
can do little to reply to objections, or to help
those who inquire of them regarding their faith.
Yet for the laity such knowledge is not easily
accessible. Works on theology are ordinarily
addressed to the clergy alone. They are drawn
up in a highly technical manner — a manner ill-
suited to readers who have not been through the
mill of the theological schools. It is to meet
the need of such readers, who constitute, I am
inclined to believe, no inconsiderable body, that
the present work has been written. In it I
have sought to set forth the Church's teaching
on Grace, avoiding as far as possible the
technical terminology and the citation of
authorities, which are customary in works on
divinity, but which would mean little or
nothing to those who are not already grounded
in that science.

Throughout the work the authority of St.
Thomas Aquinas has been closely followed. On
points where theologians differ I have thought

INTRODUCTION vii

it sufficient to give reasons for adopting his
solution without attempting a detailed refuta-
tion of other views. To have done so would, as
I have just indicated, have defeated the very
purpose with which the book was written.

It may, perhaps, occasion some surprise that
I have made no attempt to deal with the
problem respecting the operation of efficacious
grace, which for so long was the subject of such
acute controversy between the Dominican and
Jesuit Orders. Yet I think that the reasons
for the omission are adequate. The point at
issue was as to the nature of the causality
exercised by God as First Cause and Prime
Mover upon the free acts of the will. So far as
the actual dispute was concerned, the matter
was treated chiefly in regard to God's action on
the will within the order of grace. But the
question is one and the same, whether it be
raised in relation to the special aids of grace, or
more generally in reference to the Divine
assistance requisite for the production of any
and every act of the human will. Hence it
indubitably belongs more appropriately to the
treatise on God and His Attributes than to that
with which we are here concerned. There
seems little advantage in dealing with it in its
application to the special case of the super-

vlii INTRODUCTION

natural order. The solution reached in regard
to the more general issue must necessarily
determine that proper to the particular applica-
tion. What is more, the doctrine of grace can,
it seems to me, be fully treated without touch-
ing upon this point. Our belief that God is able
by His eflScacious grace to guide the human
will according to His good pleasure without
infringing its liberty, does not involve us in the
necessity of investigating the precise mode in
which He exercises this guidance. In the treatise
on God and His Attributes it is otherwise.
There the subject calls for consideration in its
own right, and the treatise would be incomplete
without it. I may further add that the problem
is primarily a metaphysical one ; and there is
reason to doubt whether many readers would
have cared to follow so abstract and diflScult a
discussion. In these circumstances I judged it
best to leave the question untouched ; and so
far as in me lay, I have avoided all expression
of opinion on the matter. I do not think that
the book suffers from the omission.

In quoting from Scripture in those passages
where the Douay Bible, taken as it is from the
Vulgate, fails to convey the full meaning of the
original Greek, I have made use of the Protestant
Revised Version ; the few citations drawn from

INTRODUCTION ix

this source are in all cases distinguished by the
letters RV.

Among recent works dealing with my subject
I must acknowledge my special obligations to
La Grace et la Gloire by P^re J. Terrien, S.J.,
and De V Inhabitation du S. Esprit by P^re
B. Froget, O.P.

G. H. JOYCE.

St. Beuno's College,
N. Wales.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I

SANCTIFYING GRACE — I

PAOII

1. Sons of God. 2. Divine Adoption. 3. Regener-
ation. 4. The Life of the Soul. 5. The Term
"Grace." 6. Incorporation into Christ. - 1-25

CHAPTER II

SANCTIFYING GRACE — II

1. Heirs of God. 2. Partakers of the Divine Nature.
3. Opposition between Sanctifying Grace and
Sin. 4. State of Justification. - - 26-48

CHAPTER III

MAN APART FROM GRACE

1. An Unendowed Humanity. 2. Original Justice.
3. Condition of Fallen Man. 4. The Gospel
Message. 5. Modern Pelagianism. - 49-70

xi

xii CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES AND THE GIFTS Or
THE HOLY GHOST

PAOES

1. Principles of Supernatural Action. 2. The Theo-
logical Virtues : Faith, Hope, and Charity.
3. The Infused Moral Virtues. 4. The Seven
Gifts of the Holy Ghost. 5. The Gift of
Wisdom. 71-99

CHAPTER V

THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

1. The Teaching of Scripture. 2. God's Presence in
all Things. 3. His Presence to the Blessed in
Heaven. 4. His Presence in the Just. 5. The
Doctrine of Appropriation. - - - 100-118

CHAPTER VI

THE ACQUISITION OF SANCTIFYING GRACB

1. Dispositions requisite for Justification. 2. Need
of Actual Grace. 3. Sanctifying Grace conferred
in Different Degrees. 4. Protestant Doctrine of
Justification by Faith alone. 5. Sufficient and
Efficacious Grace. - - - - 119-141

CHAPTER VII

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE

1. Divine Aid Necessary for Perseverance. 2. Func-
tion of the Gifts of the Spirit. 3. Final Perse-
verance. 4. Avoidance of Venial Sin, - 142-157

CONTENTS xiii

CHAPTER YIII

GROWTH IN GRACE : (1) MERIT

PAGES

1. Growth in Grace. 2. Merit : its Possibility and
Conditions. 3. Protestant Objections. 4. Relation
of Charity to Merit. 5. Every Good Work of tho
Just Meritorious. 6. Measure of Merit. 7. Merit
in Relation to Perseverance. - - 158-179

CHAPTER IX

GROWTH IN GRACE: (2) THE SACRAMENTS

1. Increase of Grace ex ojpere operato. 2. The Holy
Eucharist as the Sacrament of Union : 3. As the
Nourishment of the Soul. 4. Actual Graces of the
Eucharist. 5. Daily Communion. 6. The Sacra-
ment of Penance. - - - - 180-201

CHAPTER X

THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF GRACE

1. Mortal Sin and its Effects. 2. Restoration Possible
for All. 3. Contrition and Attrition. 4. The
Debt of Temporal Punishment. 5. Recovery of
Merits. 6. Effects of Venial Sin. - - 202-221

CHAPTER XI

THE CHURCH THE HOME OF GRACE

1. The Catholic Church the Home of Grace. 2. Situ-
ation of Heretics as regards Salvation. 3. Case of
Jews and Mahommedans. 4. Problem of the
Pagan World. 5. Theory of a Limbus Adultorum
Rejected. - , . . . 22^-244

XIV CONTENTS

CHAPTER XII

GRACE AND GLORY

FAOSS

1. The Divine Sonship Perfected. 2. The Beatific
Vision. 3. The Love of the Blessed. 4. The Joy
of the Blessed. 5. " Accidental " Rewards. 245-267

y

THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE
OF GRACE

CHAPTER I

SANCTIFYING GRACE— I

1, Sons of God. 2. Divine Adoption. 3. Regeneration.
4. The Life of the Soul. 5. The Term *« Grace."
6. Incorporation into Christ.

1. The redemptive work of Calvary has made
of men the sons of God. This truth is reiterated
again and again by the writers of the New
Testament. And one and all make it clear that
the sonship of which they speak is no mere
metaphor : that it is a new endowment of our
nature, conferring upon us a supernatural
dignity, raising us to a new rank in the scale of
being, and ensuring to us a destiny of glory to
which, otherwise, we should have had no title.

It may, perhaps, be asked whether we are
not God's children in virtue of our creation
alone? Have not all men, it may be urged,
whether they are followers of Christ or not,
a right to call God their Father ? He is the

X

2 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Author of their being : they are dependent for
all things on His Providence. Does not this
suffice to make our relation towards Him one of
sonship ? The answer to this question must be
in the negative. The relation of the creature
to the Creator is utterly different from that of
a child to his father. A child has the right to
share his father's home, his father's happiness,
his father's intimate companionship. He is, in
a sense, one with his father. Creation gives us
no title to any union such as this. The life of
man, if his natural destiny alone be considered,
has no common element with the life of God.
The creature as such is God's servant, not God's
child. A servant may claim that his master
should protect him and provide for him. And
similarly the creature has a claim that God
should exercise His Providence on his behalf
But he has no right to enjoy fellowship with
God as His child. An infinite distance separates
them, the one from the other.

In thus denying that creation suffices to
render man the child of God we are not, it must
be understood, speaking of the condition in
which God placed our first parents, when He
called them into being. They were, it is true,
God's children. But they were so not in virtue
q{ their creation, but by reason of an additional

SANCTIFYING GRACE— I 3

and supernatural endowment which it pleased
Him to bestow on them. That endowment
Adam forfeited alike for himself and his
descendants by the Fall. With this subject,
however, we shall deal in a later chapter

It is, indeed, the case that some of the pagan
poets taught that man is akin to God : and that
St. Paul himself quotes them as saying that
**we are also His offspring" (Acts xvii. 28).
But in fact it was not of sonship in any true
sense that they were speaking. They were
inspired by the ideas of Stoic philosophy : they
held that the world was an emanation from
God, and that the human reason was actually a
particle of the Divine reason itself. It was in
this erroneous sense alone that they claimed
kinship with the Godhead. The idea of fellow-
ship with God was remote from their minds.

The New Testament, on the other hand,
speaks of a veritable sonship. It teaches that
in virtue of an act of Divine condescension man
can enter on a new relation to God ; that
through Jesus Christ he ceases to be a servant
and becomes a son : and that he is thus privi-
leged to enjoy that which by nature can belong
to no creature however exalted — fellowship
with God.

The words of the inspired writers are such

4 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

as to leave no doubt as to their meaning.
St. John points to this sonship as the special
privilege conferred on those who accept the
revelation of Jesus Christ, and affirms in
weighty terms the supernatural character of
the gift. " He came unto His own, and His
own received Him not ; but as many as received
Him, He gave them power to be made the sons
of God, to them that believe in His name : who
are born not of blood, nor of the will of the
flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God *'
(John i. 11-13). And in another passage he
writes : "Behold what manner of charity the
Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should
be called and should be the sons of God. . . .
Dearly beloved, now are we the sons of God, and
it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We
know that when He shall appear, we shall be
like to Him " (1 John iii. 1, 2). The words could
hardly be more emphatic. The apostle goes
out of his way to assure us that the sonship is
no mere metaphor, but a reality ; and he tells
us that the ultimate destiny of those who have
been raised to this dignity, is to become sharers
in the Divine glory. Again, he teaches us that
those who have been made God's children are
privileged to enjoy a filial intimacy with Him :
^* That which we have seen and have heard, we

SANCTIFYING GRACE— I 5

declare unto you, that you also may have
fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be
w^ith the Father, and with His Son Jesus
Christ" (1 Johni. 3).

The same truths are found in many passages
of St. Paul's writings. " God," he says, " hath
predestinated us unto the adoption of children
through Jesus Christ " (Eph. i. 5). Those who
are thus sons of God enjoy, he declares, the
indwelling presence of the Holy Ghost : ** Be-
cause ye are sons, God hath sent the Spirit of
His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father !*'
(Gal. iv. 6). And elsewhere he tells us that
where the Holy Ghost abides, He produces in
the soul an unhesitating conviction that the
chasm between the Creator and the creature
has been bridged, and that we are indeed God's
children — one family with His only-begotten
Son, Jesus Christ : *' The Spirit Himself giveth
testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of
God : and if sons, heirs also ; heirs of God and
joint-heirs with Christ" (Rom. viii. 17).

St. Peter and St. James are no less clear.
"We have been begotten again," says St. Peter,
" not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
by the word of God, which liveth and abideth "
(1 Pet. i. 23, R.V.). And St. James tells us :
** Of His own will hath He begotten us by the

6 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GEACE

word of truth that we should be a kind of first-
fruits of His creatures'' (Jas. i. 13, E.V.).

Nor are we without the testimony of our
Lord Himself He spoke of the dignity to
which His followers are called in terms which
go even further than the passages we have
already cited. Their union with Him, He
declared, is so intimate that they share His
life (John xv. 5), and thus through Him, the
only-begotten Son, they are in the closest
communion with the Father (xvii. 20). In
this way they participate in the glory which
is His by right, and the love with which the
Father loves Him becomes theirs also (xvii. 22,
26). In the same discourse in which He spoke
of these things He promised them the gift of
the Holy Spirit, who should take up His abode
in them, and thus eifect their union with the
Divine Trinity (xiv. 16, sqq,). It is in the light
of these utterances that we must interpret the
message sent to the eleven on the morning of
the Eesurrection : " I ascend to My Father and
to your Father, to My God and your God"
(John XX. 17). The words at once aflSrm the
truth of our sonship, and distinguish it from
His. He is Son by nature ; we are created
beings, raised to sonship as the effect of His
Eedemption.

SANCTIFYING GRACE— I 7

The apostles do not hesitate to tell us that
the very purpose of the Incarnation was to
confer this sonship upon men. Thus St. Paul
writes : '* When the fulness of time was come,
God sent forth His Son, made of a woman,
made under the law : that He might redeem
them that were under the law, that we might
receive the adoption of sons "(Gal. iv. 4, 5).
We are more accustomed, it may be, to use
other terms, and to say that God sent His Son
to save us from sin. But the expressions are
equivalent. The Redemption is more than a
mere remission of guilt. Together with forgive-
ness is bestowed the gift of sonship. The same
grace that blots out man's guilt makes him a
son of God.

Outside the Catholic Church there have been
some who have sought to explain the sonship of
which the New Testament speaks, as meaning no
more than that the barrier which sin had placed
between man and his Maker was done away, and
that men had thereby been restored to the con-
dition in which as God s creatures they should
ever have been. The change, they hold, is
simply a restoration of the moral order, which
sin had disturbed. We have already shown
that such a view involves a total misconception
of what sonship really implies. And the passages

8 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

we have quoted will have made it clear that the
gift of which the New Testament speaks is no
mere restoration of moral order, but the elevation
to a new and supernatural dignity.

2. We have seen that St. Paul speaks of us
as sons of God by adoption (Rom. viii. 15 ;
Eph. i. 5 ; Gal. iv. 4). The expression is em-
ployed by all theological writers to distinguish
our sonship from the natural sonship of the
Eternal Word. Yet it calls for some considera-
tion : for, as used by the apostle, the term
** adoption " had a somewhat different meaning
from that which it bears at the present day.
In its modern use it signifies little more than
the intention to educate the adopted child as
though he were a son, and, provided he should
give no cause for dissatisfaction, to bequeath to
him a son's inheritance. This purpose is revoc-
able at will, and confers no legal rights on the
person adopted. The adoption of which the
apostle spoke was something very different from
this. Under the Roman law the sanctions of
adoption were of the strongest kind, and the
rights conferred were in all respects the same as
those which attach to natural sonship. Before
the law the person adopted no longer belonged
to the family in which he had been born, but
to that into which he had been adopted. His

SANCTIFYING GRACE— 1 9

membership in the new family was henceforth
not on sufferance or at will, but by indefeasible
right. Its social and political interests, and
those of the gens or clan to which it belonged,
were his interests. The dignities that belonged
to his new family were his. Nor could the
adoption be reversed save through legal for-
malities just as strictly prescribed as those by
which he had been admitted. In the eye of the
law he had been born again.

From this it will appear that when St. Paul
speaks of us as sons by adoption he entirely
excludes the view first mentioned — that the
sonship of the New Testament signifies no more
than a return of man to the obedience due from
him to God, and the consequent renewal of
God's favour in his regard. The term implies
a fundamental alteration in man's status, bring-
ing him into the very closest fellowship with
God.

Yet even when this is borne in mind, the
expression may mislead us. It almost inevitably
suggests to our minds the limitations of human
adoption. From these the Divine adoption is
free. Indeed, it is impossible in the nature of
things that an attribute should belong to God
in precisely the same way as it belongs to man.
It must needs belong to Him in such a manner

10 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

as no longer to carry with it the imperfections
which attach to it in the creature. Hence the
sense in which it is affirmed of Him is analogous
to, but not identical with, that in which it is
affirmed of man. Thus we call God the Maker
of the world which He created ; and we use the
same term " maker " of men in regard to their
works — speaking of the inventor as the maker
of the machine which he has devised, and of the
potter as the maker of the vessel he has
fashioned. But the meaning of the word in the
two cases is very different. Man does but shape
and apply the materials which lie ready to his
hand. It is God who has provided those
materials ; and He has fixed the laws which
determine their use. Man can but employ what
God has given him ; God alone can make, in the
full and perfect sense of the term. When He
made the world, He created it. Before He
spoke the word there was nothing — not even
empty space. When He commanded the uni-
verse sprang into being in accordance with His
design, and in obedience to His purpose.
Similarly, we say that man heals and that
God heals. Yet here, too, it is but by analogy
that the same word is employed in the two
cases. Man heals by assisting the vital forces
to repair what is amiss. Those forces must act

SANCTIFYING GRACE— I 11

according to their own laws. If the body has
suffered injury, it can only be repaired at the
rate at which their action proceeds. With God
it is otherwise. He is not dependent on natural
law, for nature obeys Him as her Lord. When
He cures miraculously, the cure in very many
cases is instantaneous. The destroyed tissues
reappear ; they are not slowly built up in
Nature's laboratory. Even where the natural
force is non-existent, as in the case of the man
born blind, His word has power to call it into
being.

Adoption affords another instance of the
analogous use of a term as applied to God and
as applied to man. Man adopts and God adopts.
Yet human adoption, however strong are the
sanctions given to it, is at best a legal fiction.
It cannot make a man what he is not. No legal
instrument can alter his personal characteristics
— those distinctive properties of body and of
mind which are his by birth. These he received
from his parents. No change can be effected in
them so as to render him in this regard the heir
of the family into which he has been adopted.
It is otherwise with Divine adoption. In God's
dealings legal fictions have no place. If, as
revelation assures us, God makes us His sons,
it follows that thereby man is enriched with

12 CATHOLIC DOCTHINE OF GEACE

new powers and new endowments, which make
him in some mysterious way like to God. In
virtue of his adoption he becomes what he was
not before : he is born again.

3. This truth is set before us in express terms
in the doctrine of Regeneration, This word has
become so famihar that men often fail to realize
what it signifies. We see it employed occasion-
ally to denote nothing more than a moral
amelioration in a man's character. Yet its true
meaning is far different from this. It signifies
that a new nature has been conferred on us :
that the humanity we received from our parents
by natural generation has been transformed
into something better ; that a Divine operation
has moulded us into the image and likeness of
God, and has thereby given us the right to call
Him Father. The moral change which regenera-
tion involves is the result of this far more
fundamental renewing of the soul. Thus St.
Paul writes : *' Not by works of justice which
we have done, but according to His mercy He
saved us by the laver of regeneration and the
renovation of the Holy Ghost, Whom He hath
poured forth on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ our Saviour " (Tit. iii. 5, 6). St. John in
his first epistle employs the strongest terms to
show of how transcendent a character is the gift

SANCTIFYING GKACE— I 13

bestowed upon us. '* Whosoever is born of God/*
he says, '' committeth not sin ; for His seed
abideth in him" (1 John iii. 9). The precise
meaning of the assertion that regeneration
is incompatible with sin will be considered in
the next chapter. Here it is suflScient to point
out that the apostle's words imply that a
physical transformation takes place in the souls
of those who are " born of God." Nothing less
than this can be signified by the words : " His
seed abideth in him." Precisely the same
teaching is contained in some words of St.
Peter, which we have already had occasion to
quote : " We have been begotten again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible." Our Lord
Himself, at the very beginning of His ministry,
put this truth before Nicodemus. " Unless a
man be born again," He said to him, " he cannot
see the kingdom of God" (John iii. 3). And when
the Jewish doctor pressed to know His meaning
further, He declared that the new birth of which
He spoke must be effected by the Holy Spirit
Himself, and that it was bestowed on man
through the sacrament of baptism : " Unless a
man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost
he cannot enter into the kingdom of God "
(John iii. 5).

Occasionally St. Paul speaks of the change

14 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

involved in this new birth as a new creation.
'* Wherefore if any man is in Christ," he writes,
"he is a new creature : the old things are
passed away ; behold they are become new '*
(2 Cor. V. 16., R.V.). And again: "We are
His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works" (Eph. ii. 10). And later in the
same epistle he exhorts his readers to " put on
the new man who according to God is created
in justice and holiness of truth " (Eph. iv. 24).

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the
strength of the expressions which the fathers of
the Church employ regarding the new birth of
baptism. St. Chrysostom says : " What its
mother's womb is to the child, that the water
of baptism is to the believer : in it he is formed
and fashioned."^ And the same striking simile
is found in Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian,
St. Cyril of Jerusalem and others. St. Leo the
Great and St. Ambrose do not hesitate to
compare the baptismal water with the womb of
the Blessed Virgin, which gave birth to the
Son of God. " The water of baptism," says
St. Leo, " is for every man who is born again
as it were the Virgin's womb: and the same
Spirit fills the font, Who filled the Virgin."^

^ Horn. XXVI. In Joan (P.G. lix., 153).
» Leo M., Sem. in Nat., iv. (P,L. liv., 206),

SANCTIFYING GEACE— I 15

In yet another series of passages a comparison
is drawn between the office of water in baptism
and the part ascribed to that element in the
account of the creation. As the Holy Spirit
moved upon the face of the waters ere yet life
had appeared upon the earth, so does His
presence rest upon the waters of the font : as
on the fifth day of the Creation water was the
element from which living creatures first issued,
so it is now water that gives birth to soul.
Thus St Jerome writes : ** The Spirit of God
alone moved, even as one who drives his chariot,
over the face of the waters, and produced from
them the infant world, a type of the Christian
child that is drawn from the laver of baptism.
. . . The first living beings come out of the
waters : and believers soar out of the laver with
wings to heaven."^ TertuUian, Theophilus of
Antioch, Chrysostom — all speak in similar terms.
It is of interest to note that in one of the
ancient liturgical prayers still employed by the
Church at a service which most of the readers
of this work will have often witnessed, the same
two comparisons occur. The Preface sung at
the Blessing of the Font on Holy Saturday
contains the following words : ** 0 God, Whose

^ Jerome, Ep. LXIX. (Nicene and Fosf-Nicene Frs.^
p. 145).

16 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Spirit moved upon the waters at the first
creation of things, that the nature of water
raight even then receive power to sanctify . . .
may He (the Holy Spirit) by the secret infusion
of His Divinity render fruitful this water pre-
pared for the regeneration of men : that it may
receive the gift of sanctity, and from the
immaculate womb of the Divine fount a heavenly
offspring may come forth, born again into a new
creature." In the early Church the baptism of
catechumens took place on Holy Saturday.
The whole prayer has direct and immediate
reference to the ceremony just about to follow,
which was to make them members of the
Church and number them amongst God's
children. They are the "heavenly ofispring"
which the baptismal font was to bring forth to
the new life. And the Preface, which is of
considerable length, closes with the petition
" that each one who becomes a partaker of this
sacrament of regeneration may be born again
into a new infancy, in which true innocence
shall be his."

These citations, short and inadequate as they
are, will suffice to show how intense has been
the conviction of the Church in every age that
the new birth which makes man a son of God
is a tremendous reality : that after it he is an

SANCTIFYING GKACE— I 17

altogether different being from what he was
before.

4. The passages in the New Testament in
which we are told that the purpose of our Lord's
coming was that men might have '* life," are but
another expression of the same truth. It will
be worth our while to consider some of these :
for they will help us to realize still more clearly
how large is the place which this doctrine
occupies in the Christian revelation. " I am
come," our Lord says, ** that they may have life,
and that they may have it more abundantly "
(John X. 10). And again : *' He that belie veth
in Me, though he were dead, shall live : and
every one that liveth and believeth in Me shall
not die for ever " (John xi. 25, 26). This life
He assured His followers was to find its appro-
priate nourishment in the gift of the Holy
Eucharist which He was about to bestow :
** Except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink His blood, you shall not have life in
you" (John vi. 54). And St. John, to whom
we owe the record of these sayings, closes the
main narrative of his Gospel with the words :
** These are written that you may believe that
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God : and that
believing you may have life in His Name"
(John XX. 31). The same apostle's first epistle

2

18 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OP GRACE

sets before us with almost startling distinctness
the great alternative between this life, God's
gift to those who accept Christ, and spiritual
death, the lot of those who reject Him : " He
that hath the Son hath life : he that hath not
the Son hath not life. These things I write to
you that you may know that you have eternal
life, you who believe in the name of the Son of
God" (1 John V. 12, 13).

The life of which our Lord and His apostle
speak in these passages, and which they some-
times term eternal life, is, plainly enough, not
something which belongs to a future existence
alone, but an endowment which those who
believe in Christ possess here, and which death
when it comes will be unable to destroy. What
it is, St. John tells us. " Whosoever believeth
that Jesus is the Christ/* he says, " is born of
God " (1 John V. 1). The life which Christ has
brought us, which He purchased for us at the
price of His Passion, is the life which makes us
sons of God — the life which becomes ours
through the new birth of regeneration.

When the Catholic Church speaks of* sancti-
fying grace," it is this new life given us by God
that she means. But here it should be noted
that the term *' life " has two senses. Some-
times we employ it to denote the state in which

SANCTIFYING GKACE— I 19

a man is capable of exercising the activities
which flow from the existence of a vital prin-
ciple. It is in this sense that we say that a
man's life has been a happy or a sad one, or
that his life has lasted so many years. On the
other hand, sometimes it is used to signify the
vital principle itself. Sanctifying grace is life
in this latter sense : it is the vital principle by
which we live as sons of God. When we wish to
speak of the state in which we are capable of
the activities proper to this life, we speak of the
state of grace.

5. Here it seems desirable to say a few words
as to the term ** grace." Passages of Scripture
may very possibly occur to the mind of the
reader, in which the word cannot be understood
as signifying the life of which we have been
speaking. How, it may be asked, is this to be
explained ? Is it really the case that the
Church, while adopting a word from Scripture,
has attached to it a meaning other than that
which it there bears ?

To this it may be answered that in Scripture
the word ** grace" (x^/069, gratia) is used in
several senses. Very frequently, certainly, it
signifies not a gift bestowed on us, but the
goodwill or favour with which God regards us.
Thus St. Paul says of God, that He '* called me

20 CATHOLIC DOCTKINE OF GRACE

by His grace " (Gal. i. 15), and tells us that we
are * 'justified freely by His grace through the
redemption which is in Christ Jesus " (Rom*
iii. 24). In the same sense he lays stress on the
difference between what is freely bestowed by
grace and what is due as a matter of pure
justice. '* If the election is by grace, it is not
now by works ; otherwise grace is no more
grace " (Rom. xi. 6). But the word is also used
to signify the gifts which God*s goodwill towards
us leads Him to bestow. In this reference, with
one or two rare exceptions {e.g,, 2 Cor. ix. 8), it
is used of spiritual gifts only ; and more particu-
larly of those which God confers through Christ
as the fruit of His redemptive work. Thus the
apostle writes to the Corinthians : " We exhort
you that you receive not the grace of God in
vain " (2 Cor. vi. 1). It is this use of the term
that leads him to distinguish the Christian dis-
pensation, as that of grace, from the Jewish
dispensation, that of the law. As thus employed
it may denote all the various spiritual gifts
bestowed on the Church. Thus we read :
*' There are diversities of graces, but the same
Spirit ... to one indeed by the Spirit is given
the word of wisdom, and to another the word of
knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to
another the grace of healing, in one Spirit"

SANCTIFYING GEACE— I 21

(1 Cor. xli. 7-9). But occasionally the word is
used in an altogether restricted reference, to
signify the characteristic prerogative of
Christians as such — the spiritual gift which
is theirs in virtue of their membership in the
Church, and which is the ground of their
confidence towards God. This is nothing else
than the gift of which we have been speaking,
the new life by which the Christian becomes a
son of God ; in other words, sanctifying grace.
Thus St. Peter speaks of himself as " testifying
that this is the true grace of God wherein you
stand" (1 Pet. v. 12); and elsewhere bids his
readers " Grow in grace and in the knowledge of
our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. iii. 18). And
similarly St. Paul says that '* Through Jesus
Christ we have access through faith into this
grace wherein we stand " (Rom. v. 2).

There are one or two other uses of the word
in Scripture. But as they occur but rarely, and
do not bear on our subject, it will be sufficient
merely to notice their existence. It is used to
denote that which attracts favour: ''Let your
speech be always in grace " — i.e,, courteous and
such as to win goodwill (Col. iv. 6). And once
or twice it has the sense of '* thanks " : '' Thanks
be to God Who hath given us the victory through
our Lord Jesus Christ " (1 Cor, xv. 57).

22 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Nothing could be more natural than that
among Christians the word should soon become
a technical term to signify the spiritual gifts
characteristic of the religion of Christ ; and that
the gift of new life, by which we become sons
of God, should be regarded as the supreme
grace. As theological terminology developed,
the expression *' sanctifying grace " was em-
ployed to distinguish it from other gifts which
also had a claim to be designated as graces.
And that name has now passed into common
use.

The gift of Divine sonship is by no means the
only immediate effect resulting from the infusion
of sanctifying grace into the soul. Scripture
sets before us other aspects of this elevation of
our nature. We are incorporated into Christ,
and participate in His life ; we become ** heirs of
God and joint-heirs with Christ " ; we are made
** partakers of the Divine nature." We shall
conclude the present chapter with some account
of our incorporation into Christ, reserving the
two latter heads for subsequent treatment.

6. Our incorporation into Christ is taught in
explicit terms in our Lord's discourse to His
apostles at the Last Supper. There He com-
pared His relationship to them to that which
the vine bears to its branches. ** I am the

SANCTIFYING GEACE— I 23

vine," He said, ''you are the branches. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it
abide in the vine, so neither can you, unless you
abide in Me " (John xv. 5). The words imply
that there is a real and organic union between
the Christian and Christ ; and that this union
confers on the former a new and higher life,
which is sustained by a continuous communica-
tion of vital energy from Christ Himself.
This teaching receives full development in
St. Paul's writings. We are, he assures us,
members of Christ ; Christ is the Head, and we
are members of His Body, which is the Church.
'* Know you not," he says, ** that your members
are the members of Christ " (1 Cor. vi. 15) ; and
again : *' As the body is one and hath many
members ... so also is Christ. . . . Now you
are the body of Christ, and severally members
thereof" (1 Cor. xii. 12, 27, R.V.). It is this,
he tells us, that makes us God's children : *' You
are all the children of God, by faith in Christ
Jesus ; for as many of you as have been baptized
into Christ, have put on Christ" (Gal. iii. 26, 27).
Those who are admitted to this union by
baptism become sharers in Christ's Passion and
Resurrection. The symbolic burial and resur-
rection of baptism, when the new Christian is
dipped in the water and rises from it again,

24 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GKACE

effects a spiritual transformation in him. ** Are
ye ignorant," says the apostle, '* that all we
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into His death ? We were buried,
therefore, with Him through baptism into
death : that like as Christ was raised again
from the dead through the glory of the Father,
so we also might walk in newness of life "
(Rom. vi. 3, 4, KY.).

The change which we have just considered
transfers us, we are told, from the family of the
first Adam to that of the second. The image
of Christ takes the place of the image of Adam
in us : the new man replaces the old. Yet during
our earthly existence this change is not com-
plete. And, in order that the life of Christ
may receive its full development, the old man
within us must be done to death — it must be
crucified. Thus the apostle speaks of himself as
" always bearing about in the body the dying
of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be
manifested in our body " (2 Cor. iv. 10). And
to his Colossian neophytes he writes as follows :
" If you be risen with Christ, seek the things
that are above, where Christ is sitting at the
right hand of God. . . . For you are dead, and
your life is hid with Christ in God. . . . Mortify
{lit.y put to death), therefore, your members

SANCTIFYING GKACE— I 25

which are upon the earth, fornication, unclean -
ness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness "
(Col. iii. 1-5). In this way the life of grace is
a progressive assimilation to Christ on the part
of the Christian. It is a continuous advance in
the putting off of the old man and the putting
on of the new (Eph. iv. 8).

In what measure, it may be asked, can the
union with Christ be attained? What is its
goal so far as our present life is concerned ?
This also has been told us. It may be carried
so far as to justify the apostle's words : " I live,
and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me "
(Gal. ii. 30, R.V.). Our sonship is, in fact,
nothing less than the transformation of our
nature into the likeness of the Son of God ; and
the principle which is to effect this change in
us, which is to raise us from our baseness to
this stupendous dignity, is the sanctifying grace
conferred upon us at our baptism.

CHAPTER II
SANCTIFYING GEACE-II

1. Heirs of God. 2. Partakers of the Divine Nature.

3. Opposition between Sanctifying Grace and Sin.

4. State of Justification.

1. ScMPTURE assures us that one of the effects
of our sonship is that we are to be heirs of God.
** If a son, an heir also through God " (Gal. iv.
7) says St. Paul. Moreover, he declares that
the inheritance to which we have a claim is
comparable to that enjoyed by our Lord Him-
self We are, he tells us, '* heirs of God and
joint-heirs with Christ." (Rom. viii. 17). Ex-
pressions such as these cannot be set aside as
metaphors. They can only signify that in
virtue of our sonship we are to possess the
treasures which are by nature proper to God
alone. In regard to this Divine inheritance,
however, we must be careful to avoid the limita-
tions involved in the idea of inheritance as it is
known among men. The material possessions
which men own here can belong to one

26

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 27

person only at a time : and for that reason a
son cannot inherit as long as his father lives.
As regards spiritual riches it is otherwise.
They can be held by many simultaneously, and
the increase in the number of those who hold
them does not diminish the full possession en-
joyed by each. Men inherit the kingdom of
God when they are elevated to a share in those
spiritual treasures which make the blessedness
of God. It is this which our adoption secures
for us. The beatitude which by nature would
be the exclusive prerogative of the Three
Divine Persons, becomes ours also.

In what does God's bliss consist ? The bliss
of every spiritual being must needs be found in
the exercise of thought and love : for it is by
these powers that spiritual riches are possessed.
God is a Spirit : and it is by knowledge and by
love that He enjoys the infinite riches of the
Godhead. Moreover, if we ask what is the ob-
ject the contemplation and love of which con-
stitute His beatitude, we must answer that it
can only be the Supreme Truth and the Supreme
Good — the abyss of all perfection, the Divine
Essence itself. God cannot be dependent for
His blessedness on any creature : and were the
immediate object of His contemplation anything
but Himself, this would be the case. The joy

28 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

with which He contemplates the world He has
made cannot add anything to that which
was His before the world was. The created
universe, with all its innumerable wonders, does
but mirror forth an infinitesimal fragment of
the treasures of truth and reality contained in
the infinity of Divine Being. God loves all
that He has made : and He loves those things
most which are most worthy of His love. But
creatures deserve His love only in proportion as
they manifest, more or less adequately, some
element in His own uncreated perfection. The
supreme object of love can be nothing but the
Source of all Good.

God's love for Himself involves no egoism, as
would be the case, were a creature's love to
centre in itself. Egoism is to love self more
than one loves the Good : to invert the due
order of things by a disproportionate love of
self There is no inversion of due order in
God's love for Himself He is supreme good-
ness, and in loving Himself it is goodness that
He loves. This love is the highest holiness :
for holiness consists in the love of the Good.

We are accustomed to say that the bliss of
God is found in the Beatific Vision. By that
term we signify primarily the immediate know-
ledge of the Divine Essence. But it does not

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 29

lie in knowledge alone. The contemplation of
the Good carries with it the love of the Good.
The Beatific Vision is alike infinite knowledge
and infinite love. Again the perfect know-
ledge and perfect love of the highest Good in-
volve as their consequence supreme joy. For
joy is consequent on the possession of the Good :
and, as we have already noted, in the spiritual
order possession consists in cognition and love.
Thus the bliss of God is at the same time
infinite intelligence, infinite love and infinite joy.
The Vision of God is utterly beyond the scope
of man's natural endowments. In regard to
what is so far above us, we are altogether
powerless. This truth finds expression in some
words of St. Paul. He speaks of God as the
** King of kings and Lord of lords, . . . Who
inhabiteth light inaccessible, Whom no man
hath seen or can see " (1 Tim. vi. 15). Indeed
reason itself shows us that no created being,
however exalted, can by its natural powers en-
joy the immediate intuition of God. The limits
of a creature's knowledge are fixed and deter-
mined by its faculties. And the reach of a
creature's faculties is strictly limited : it is not
indefinite. Why is it that a man cannot per-
ceive the spiritual world around him — the good
and evil angels that are about his path ? We

30 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

can know about these things : but we are in-
capable of direct knowledge of them. It is not
because in themselves they are incapable of
being the objects of direct cognition. It is
because we are men, and although we have a
spiritual soul, yet all the elements of our know-
ledge must come to us through the avenues of
sense. From the data of sense we can argue to
the existence of a spiritual world ; but we can-
not perceive it. Our nature is corporeal : and
hence the immediate knowledge of pure spirits
— a higher order of being — is beyond our
faculties. It may be laid down as a general
principle, that where natures are on entirely
different planes of being, the lower nature is
incapable of direct perception of the higher.
Such a difference there is between the corporeal
and the incorporeal. But how much more is
this true of God and creatures. Even the
highest creature is separated from God by an
immeasurable distance — by the chasm which
divides the finite from the Infinite. There is
no common genus for the self-existent Creator,
and for those beings which are held up out of
nothingness by the act of His will. However
exalted the nature of a creature may be, how-
ever wide the range of its faculties, it is utterly
impossible that those faculties should give it a

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 31

direct and immediate intuition of God. For
the natural powers of a creature must cor-
respond to its finite essence. And powers pro-
portioned to a finite essence must be destined
for finite objects. The direct knowledge of
the Infinite must in the very nature of things
be wholly beyond them.

Yet although the possession of Divine be-
atitude is, so far as our natural powers are con-
cerned, altogether out of our reach, it is no less
certain that it is to be ours. God designs to
raise us by His omnipotence to a beatitude and
a glory to which, by nature, we have no claim.
Again and again does Holy Scripture assure us
that the happiness of the Blessed lies in the
Beatific Vision itself — in the unveiled Vision of
God. *' Dearly beloved," says the apostle, " we
are now the sons of God : and it hath not yet
appeared what we shall be. We know that
when He shall appear, we shall be like to Him ;
for we shall see Him as He is " (1 John iii. 2) ;
and again, speaking of the blessed in heaven,
he says : " His servants shall serve Him ; and
they shall see His face" (Apoc. xxii. 4, 5). St.
Paul expressly contrasts the obscure knowledge
which we now possess by faith, with the open
vision to be granted to us in heaven. The know«
ledge of faith, he says, is, at best, indirect like the

32 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

image of a man, as it is seen reflected in a mirror
in heaven faith will pass into sight : " Now we
see in a mirror, darkly ; but then face to face ;
now I know in part ; but then I shall know
even as I am known " (1 Cor. xiii. 12, R.V.). It
is in this sense, too, that we should in all prob-
ability understand our Lord's words when He
promises to His apostles that they shall share
His glory : **The glory which Thou hast given
Me, I have given them, that they may be one,
even as We also are one . . . Father, I will that
where I am, they also whom Thou hast given
Me may be with Me : that they may see My
glory which Thou hast given Me " (John xvii.
22, 24). The Beatific Vision is in the truest
sense the glory of the only-begotten Son ; for
by nature, as we have seen, it is the exclusive
prerogative of the Three Divine Persons. And
the same truth seems to be expressed where
our Lord promises to His apostles that " they
shall eat and drink at My table in My
kingdom " (Luke xxii. 30) ; and where He
declares in the Apocalypse that, **To him that
shall overcome, I will give to sit with Me on
My throne " (Apoc. iii. 21). Such words imply
far more than mere creaturely happiness ; they
signify the participation in rights and privileges
proper to the Son of God Himself.

SANCTIFYING GEACE— II 33

Without sanctifying grace, human nature
has no claim to beatitude such as this.
But the infant, who expires with grace in his
soul, enters as by right on this inheritance of
glory. Grace has made him a son and thereby
an heir of God. It is no wonder that the
Church esteems the baptism of a dying infant
a matter of such overwhelming moment as to
be well worth the sacrifice of life itself to attain
such an end.

Grace is the title to glory. But it must not
be imagined that the connection between the
two is purely external, and that glory follows
grace simply because God has decreed that so
it shall be. Grace is nothing less than the
commencement of glory. Nor is it hard to
show that this is so. The Beatific Vision, as
we have seen, involves the elevation of our
faculties to a new plane. The intellect must
be endowed with higher powers, through which
it can possess that which by nature is beyond
it — the direct intuition of the Divine Essence.
The will must receive an altogether new love
of God — a love corresponding to that new filial
relation, in which those stand who are co-heirs
with Christ of Divine beatitude. In other
words, a new life must be infused into the soul
f— the Jife of the sons of God. But this, as the

3

34 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Christian revelation teaches us, is precisely what
grace confers. We do not have to wait for
this gift. It is ours already. Undoubtedly
we do not enjoy it in its full development.
Our intellect is not as yet strengthened to see
God, though the language of the great mystics
would seem to suggest that to some of them
even this has been granted as a transient
favour. But what we possess in germ here
will be ours in its full maturity in heaven.
The life of grace will pass into the life of glory.
** Dearly beloved, we are now the sons of God ;
and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be :
we know that when He shall appear, we shall
be like to Him ; for we shall see Him as He
is" (1 John iii. 2).

2. Yet another of the immediate effects of grace
remains to be considered. God, says St. Peter,
*' has given us most great and precious promises
that by these you may be made partakers of the
Divine nature'' (2 Pet. i. 4). Startling as the
words are, the teaching which we have already
considered will have prepared us for them.
They signify that the sonship conferred on us
through Jesus Christ raises us so far above our
creaturely condition, that by it we partake in
the life which is proper to the Three Divine
Persons in virtue of Their nature. The passage

SANCTIFYING GRACE—

does not stand altogether alone. Whe
Lord prays to His Father on behalf of tK§
apostles and all who through their word should
believe in Him, '' that they all may be one, as
Thou, Father, in Me and I in Thee, that they
also may be one in Us ... I in them, and
Thou in Me : that they may be made perfect in
one'* (John xvii. 22, 23), His words can hardly
signify less than this. If our union with God
is comparable to that which unites the Father
and the Son, it can only be a union based on a
share in the Divine life.

In what manner can a created gift such as
grace raise us to this wonderful fellowship ?
This question we have already answered. The
effect of grace is to render us capable of the
Beatific Vision. And this is the beatitude appro-
priate to the Divine nature and to no other.
Those, therefore, who by a marvellous work of
God's omnipotence are elevated to that stupen-
dous privilege, are in truth partakers of the
Divine nature.

The fathers of the Church from the earliest
times with one consent take the apostle's words
in their literal sense. There is no question of
any figurative interpretation. They do not
hesitate to speak of the '* deification " of man.
By grace, they tell us, men become gods. Thus

36 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

in the second century, St. Irenseus writes: *'We
are not made gods from the first, but first men,
then gods."* His testimony is of peculiar value :
for we know that he imbibed his knowledge of
Christian truth from St. Polycarp, himself a
disciple of the apostle St. John. We cannot
doubt that on a point such as this he is giving
us the apostolic tradition. His yet earlier con-
temporary, St. Justin Martyr, is no less explicit.
*' The word of God," he writes, " makes mortals
into immortals, men into gods." ^ Precisely the
same teaching is found in Clement of Alexandria,
Theophilus of Antioch, Hippolytus and Origen.
When we come to the fourth century, the age
of the greatest of the Greek fathers, the doc-
trine occupies a prominent place in the contro-
versy with the Macedonian heretics, who denied
the divinity of the Holy Spirit. St. Athanasius,
St. Basil, St. Gregory Nazianzen in refuting
this error assume that their readers will all
admit that we are deified by the grace which
the Holy Spirit infuses into our souls. This
they regard as a point beyond dispute, as one
of those fundamentals which no one who calls
himself a Christian dreams of denying, and
which may therefore serve as a basis for argu-

^ Adv, Em., iv., 38 (P.G. vii., 1109).
% Qr, a4 Grmc, 5 {?.Q. vi., 238),

SANCTIFYING GEACE— II 37

ment. They urge that it is absurd to hold that
any save God Himself can make men to be
gods : and that this alone demonstrates that
the Holy Spirit is not a created being but truly
God. Thus, St. Athanasius says : *' If by the
communication of the Holy Spirit we are made
partakers of the Divine nature, he would be
mad who should say that the Holy Spirit has a
created nature and not the nature of God. For
it is through Him that they in whom He dwells
are deified. But if He deifies, then there can
be no doubt that His nature is the nature of
God."^ St. Gregory Nazianzen speaks to the
same effect : "I cannot believe that salvation
is communicated to me by an equal. If the
Holy Spirit is not God, let Him first become
God and then let Him bring me, his equal, to
Divine honours."^

The testimony of the West is no less decisive.
St. Augustine appeals to this doctrine to explain
the opening words of the forty-ninth Psalm :
*' The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken : and
hath called the earth from the rising of the sun
to the going down thereof." What, he inquires,
is signified by the expression : '' The God of
gods" ? In the course of his reply, he writes as

1 Ad Serap., i., 24 (P.G. xxvi. 585).

2 Or. 34 (P.G. xxxvi. 252).

38 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

follows : " It is evident that it is men whom He
calls gods, not, of course, as being begotten of
His nature, but as being deified by His grace.
For as He who is just in His own right, and who
does not owe His justice to another, can alone
justify, so He alone can deify who is God in His
own right, and not by another's gift. He who
justifies. He it is who deifies, for by justification
He makes men sons of God. He gave them
"power to he made the sons of God (John i. 12).
If we have been made sons of God, then we
have been made gods. But it is God's grace
that effects this by adoption, not His nature by
generation."^ And in another place he says:
*' He descended that we might ascend ; and
retaining His own Divine nature, He partook
of our human nature, that we, while retaining
the nature that is ours, might become partakers
of His." 2

The Church's theologians have been faithful
to the patristic tradition. St. Thomas Aquinas
proposes the question whether God alone can
produce sanctifying grace : and replies that
since grace is a participation in the Divine
nature, it follows that none but God can pro-
duce grace : for God alone can deify. Elsewhere

1 Enarr, in Ps. xlix., 2 (P.L. xxxvi., 565).

2 Epist. 140, ad Honor., n. 10 (P.L. xxxiii., 542).

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 39

he writes : '^ The only-begotten Son of God,
desiring to make us partakers of His Godhead,
assumed our nature, that, having become man,
He might make men to be gods." ^

We do not beUeve that we shall be held to
have multiplied quotations unnecessarily on this
point. The doctrine of man's deification is so
wonderful that the mind finds it hard to believe
it true. Conscious as we are of our baseness,
we can scarcely credit that we are to receive —
or rather have already received — so amazing a
dignity. We ask ourselves if this is not after
all only a metaphor. It needs the repeated and
emphatic assertions of the great teachers of the
Church to persuade us that it is no metaphor,
but the literal truth ; that the sanctifying grace
with which we are endowed, communicates to
us properties which in their essential nature are
divine ; that through it we are destined to share
in the life and the beatitude of the Ever Blessed
Trinity.

3. The state of grace and the state of sin are
mutually exclusive. The state of grace is a
state of friendship with God. The fellowship
with God which grace confers, necessarily
involves our union with God by love. If there

1 Summ. Theol, 1% 2", 112, art. 1 ; Off. in Fest. 0(yrp.
Chr., Lect. iv.

40 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

be no love, there can be no fellowship : that is
to say, grace is absent. On the other hand the
state of sin is a state of enmity with God. By
all grave sin the sinner rejects Gods service.
The will turns itself away from Him to creatures.
Where there is mortal sin, then there is the
positive aversion of the will from God. Hence
any mortal sin is suflBcient to expel grace from
the soul.

St. Paul treats at some length of the opposi-
tion between grace and sin in Romans vi.,
pointing out that the difference between them
is that between servitude and liberty. Baptism,
by which grace is bestowed, he reminds us,
symbolizes death and resurrection. We pass
from a lower life to a higher — from a state of
servitude to sin to a state of incorporation into
Christ and to a share in His life. But he warns
us that those who, after having been thus freed,
yield to temptation and commit mortal sin,
inevitably fall back forthwith into the state of
bondage and spiritual death from which they
had been released : " Reckon that you are dead
to sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ our
Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your
mortal body, so as to obey the lusts thereof . . .
know you not that to whom you yield yourselves
servants to obey, his servants you are whom

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 41

you obey, whether it be of sin unto death or of
obedience unto justice . . . For the wages of
sin is death ; but the grace of God, life ever-
lasting in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. vi. 11,
12, 16, 23).

The opposition between grace and mortal sin
is of so radical a character, that not even Divine
omnipotence could bring it about that they
should co-exist in the same soul. At one time
there was some debate on this point. But at
present Catholic theologians are practically
unanimous in holding that the words of Scripture
involve this conclusion. Scripture describes the
opposition between the two as being that which
exists between light and darkness (Eph. v. 8,
2 Cor. vi. 14) ; life and death (l John iii. 14,
Col. ii. 13) ; the new man and the old man
(Col. iii. 9) ; the kingdom of darkness and the
kingdom of Christ (Col. i. 13). Expressions
such as these seem to be quite incompatible
with any other conclusion than that the two
states are direct contraries. Even omnipotence
cannot unite two contraries : it cannot make
two straight lines enclose a space, or make a
thing at one and the same time be both alive
and dead.

Venial sin does not carry with it the same
fatal consequences as does mortal. Although

42 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

venial sin is a violation of God's law, it is com-
patible with the continued existence of charity
in the soul. Either the act is only half-
deliberate ; or the consent to the temptation
was not full and final ; or the fault itself was
of a trifling character. In all these cases the
malice of the act is not sufficient to involve a
complete break with God. The man who
commits even a deliberate venial sin does not
thereby so reject God's service as to make the
creature and not the Creator his last end.
Only if he does this, does he expel from his soul
the charity which unites him to his heavenly
Father. Hence a man may be guilty of many
acts of unfaithfulness, and yet not forfeit his
privileges as a child of God.

St. John speaks of this opposition when he
says : '* Whosoever is born of God committeth
not sin : for His seed abideth in him : and he
cannot sin, because he is born of God " ( 1 John
iii. 9). Here the reference is primarily to mortal
sin ; and the apostle intends to impress on us
the utter incompatibility of such sin and son-
ship to God : the commission of grave sin is the
rejection of sonship. But the words appear to
go yet further : they seem, at first sight, to
imply that the child of God is incapable of
sinning at all. They are, in all probability, to

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 43

be understood as signifying that so far as a
man acts as a child of God, he will not sin ; that
it is because he neglects the promptings of grace
that sin has any part in him. Thus St. Augus-
tine, discussing this passage, tells us that grace
will eventually expel all sin, though not during
this life; as long as we remain on earth our
deliverance is never quite complete ; only in the
life to come will the apostle's words find their
complete realization. ■*

4. When God by the gift of grace raises a
man from the state of sin to one of acceptance
with Himself, He is said to "justify " him, and
the process is called the "justification" of the
sinner. Similarly sanctifying grace and the
other spiritual endowments which accompany
it are spoken of as "justice,'' and those who
are in the state of grace are termed " the just."*
This word, as is plain, has not the same sense
in this reference that it has when it is used to
denote the cardinal virtue of justice. In that
case it signifies the habitual purpose of render-

1 De Pecc. Merit, ii. mi. 9, 10 (P.L. xliv., 156); Contra
duas Epist. Pelag., iv. n. 31 (P.L. xliv., 634).

^ In the Authorized and Revised Versions the words
"righteousness" and "righteous" are employed instead
of " justice " and " just." This rendering has certain
advantages; but if it be adopted, the connection of the
terms with '* justification " and " to justify " becomes
obscured.

44 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Ing to each man his due. In the sense of which
we are speaking it denotes the state in which
the soul is healed from its ills and rendered
acceptable to God. This theological use of the
word *' justice" goes back to St. Paul, w^ho in
many passages of his epistles treats of our justi-
fication. Much controversy, however, has centred
round the precise meaning of the words in his
writings ever since the days of Luther and
Calvin ; and it seems necessary to explain very
briefly the points at issue.

Within the Catholic Church there has never
been any doubt that St. Paul's meaning is that
which we have indicated. He has ever been
understood as teaching that man is justified
by the infusion of sanctifying grace into his
soul, that his justification is nothing else than
the change effected in him by this gift, when
through it his sins are forgiven and he is
transformed into a new creature and made
a child of God. The Council of Trent in its
decree regarding the revealed doctrines of
justification, defines it to be '' not merely the
remission of sins, but the sanctification and
renovation of the inner man by the free
acceptance of grace and the [accompanying]
gifts ; whereby man from unjust is made just,
and from an enemy is made a friend of God,

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 45

that he may be ' an heir according to hope of
life everlasting.' " ^

Luther and Calvin, on the other hand, alike
assert that justification is a purely external
process. According to them, when the merits
of the Redemption are applied to the soul, no
internal change takes place in the sinner : he
does not thereby become any better than he
was before. The benefit which he receives is
simply that, in virtue of the Passion of Christ,
God no longer takes account of his past sins.
They are covered by Christ's merits ; these are
imputed to him as though they were his own.
On the ground of these merits God reckons him
as just, though in himself he is as devoid of
justice as he was before justification. This,
they maintain, is the doctrine of justification
set forth by St. Paul in his epistles. In one
point, however, the Calvinist system differs
from the Lutheran, and is superior to it. It
teaches that after the purely external justifica-
tion a process entitled sanctification commences,
in which under the influence of the Holy Ghost
the justified man gradually advances in piety
and lives more and more to God. But both
systems wholly reject the doctrine of sanctifying
grace and of the regeneration and elevation of

^ Sess. VI., cap. 7 (Denzinger, Ench.j 1913, n. 799).

46 CATHOLIC DOCTKINE OF GRACE

human nature by its infusion into the soul. To
both alike sonship to God is not a reality but a
legal fiction.^

The discussion contained in this and the pre-
ceding chapter will have shown how unscrip-
tural is this view, and how the doctrine of
sanctifying grace runs through warp and woof
of the whole New Testament. It appears in
the Gospels as in the Epistles, in the words of
our Lord as in those of St. Peter, St. Paul and
St. John. The teaching is there for all to see,
though time was required for the development
of a technical terminology. The idea that when
St. Paul speaks of justification, he has in view
a purely external act on God's part, and that
he regards justice as being ours only by impu-
tation, is destitute of all solid foundation. One
or two citations will render this perfectly evi-
dent. Thus in a verse which we have already
quoted he writes : *' According to His mercy He
saved us by the regeneration and renovation of
the Holy Ghost . . . that being justified by His
grace, we may be heirs according to hope of
life everlasting" (Tit. iii. 5, 7). Here our justi-
fication is definitely identified with our regenera-

1 The Anglican Church makes express profession of the
Protestant teaching on this subject in Article XL of the
Thirty-nine Articles. The majority of its divines adhere
to the system of Calvin rather than that of Luther,

SANCTIFYING GRACE— II 47

tion and renovation by the Holy Ghost. These,
however, cannot be external to us. We cannot
receive a new nature except by internal trans-
formation. These words alone would be sufficient
to convict the Protestant view of error. No less
conclusive is the parallel drawn by the apostle
between the sin which we derive from Adam
and the justice imparted to us by Christ : " For
as by the disobedience of one man many were
made sinners, so also by the obedience of One
shall many be made just" (Eom. v. 19). No
one disputes that St. Paul held original sin to
be internal to us. The doctrine of Christ's
office as the Second Adam, and of the removal
of original sin through the justice that comes
from Him — a doctrine insisted on in detail in
the passage from which this verse is taken —
becomes meaningless, unless that justice is also
internal. If the parallelism between Adam and
Christ is such as St. Paul teaches, then Christ
must impart justice to the soul just as truly as
Adam has transmitted sin.

It is plain that by denying the reality of
sanctifying grace the Reformers struck at the
very heart of the Christian religion. The rejec-
tion of that doctrine carried with it the rejection
of such truths as our sonship to God, our mem-
bership in Christ, our deliverance from the

48 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

power of sin. The old phrases might still be
retained, and in fact were retained in very
large measure, but they had been evacuated of
all meaning. What remained was the mere
stump of a religion. None can wonder that
Protestantism as a religious system was from the
very first destitute of all vitality : that, though
of such recent origin, it is already in a state of
decay, and seems destined eventually to dis-
appear altogether.

CHAPTER III

MAN APART FROM GRACE

1. An Unendowed Humanity. 2. Original Justice.
3. Condition of Fallen Man. 4. The Gospel Message,
5. Modern Pelagianism.

1. We have seen in the preceding chapters
that, in God's present dispensation, man is not
left in his natural condition. He is the re-
cipient of gifts altogether beyond anything to
which humanity could lay claim : and through
these he is destined to attain a supernatural
beatitude. Here certain questions inevitably
present themselves. What, we ask, is man
apart from grace ? What would he have been,
if God had never purposed to confer on him
either grace or the beatific vision — if, that is>
He had given him the endowments proper to
human nature, and these alone ? And what is
his condition as he comes into this world a
member of a fallen race and stained with
original sin ? The answer to these questions
will throw great light on the meaning of grace.

49 4

50 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

The benefit bestowed can only be adequately
understood, when we realize what the human
race would have been without it, and what its
forfeiture by our first father entailed upon us.

What we have already said will have shown,
that had God left man with his natural endow-
ments alone, heaven, in the proper sense of the
term, would have been out of his reach. He
could never have enjoyed the beatific vision
and seen God face to face. Human faculties
apart from grace are destitute of all capacity
for the possession of that supreme good. Cer-
tainly man's ultimate beatitude even then
would have consisted in the knowledge and
love of God ; for a rational nature cannot find
beatitude elsewhere. But it would have been a
knowledge and a love commensurate with his
natural powers. He would, when his earthly
probation was over, have been placed beyond
the reach of temptation and of temporal misery ;
and he would have enjoyed an ample knowledge
of God and of His attributes, so far as He can
be known by His created works. But the im-
mediate and direct intuition of the beatific
vision, and the ecstatic love and joy resulting
from that marvellous prerogative, could never
have been his. He would have received the
reward due to a faithful servant : he could

MAN APART FROM GRACE 51

never have been a child — a co-heir with Christ
— sharing his Father's home and his Father's
blessedness. As regards his life here below,
man's state would have been very similar to
that in which he finds himself at present. He
would have enjoyed no immunity from sickness
or from death. He would have had, moreover,
to endure the same struggle with temptation
which is his lot now. Our chief difficulty
in this regard arises, as we are well aware,
from the fact that our lower impulses are not
fully and perfectly controlled by the rational
faculty. Love, hatred, fear, anger and the
other passions anticipate the commands of
reason. The danger from this source may be
lessened by the training of character and the
acquisition of virtues, but it is never altogether
removed : throughout life our passions need
constant watching and the most rigorous con-
trol. This struggle between the higher and
lower elements within us, is a natural resultant
of our complex being. It would therefore have
been present in the state we have supposed.
One difference, however, there would have
been. At present our victory in the struggle
is made possible by grace ; without grace it
cannot be obtained. Had the supernatural gift
of grace formed no part of God's purpose for

52 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

man, He would most assuredly have given us
such assistance as we need, though the aid
would not have come through an endowment
imparting to us the gift of Divine sonship. It
would have belonged to the order of nature, not
to the order of grace.

In point of fact our actual condition is very
far from this. We are born, it is true, without
grace, and subject to all the miseries incident
to unassisted human nature. But we are
worse off by far than had we been born in what
theologians term *'the state of pure nature."
We come into the world stained with original
sin. To explain what this involves we must
say something of the privileges bestowed on
the human race at its creation, and of the for-
feiture of these privileges by the Fall.

2. Man was from the first destined to a
supernatural beatitude. The gift of sanctifying
grace was bestowed on Adam. That this was
so is the consentient testimony of the Christian
fathers. Indeed so unanimous are they on the
point, that the Council of Trent did not hesitate
to include a statement to this effect in its
decrees.^ By his transgression, Adam forfeited
the gift. Grace cannot remain in a soul
stained with mortal sin. His sin was a grave
1 Sess v., can. 1 (Denzinger, ii. 788).

MAN APAET FROM GRACE 53

act of disobedience deliberately committed, and
thus sufficed to deprive him of it. *' In what
day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die
the death," God had said to him. The threat
was fulfilled to the letter. The act of sin ex-
tinguished in his soul its supernatural life, the
life by which he was a child of God.

Together with grace our first parents received
the gift of "integrity" — that is to say, the
perfect subjection of the appetites to reason
and of the body to the soul. In them there
was no rebellion of the lower nature against
the higher. It is in this sense that the Church
has ever understood the words of Scripture :
" They were both naked, to wit, Adam and his
wife : and were not ashamed." When there
was no temptation from the passions, there was
nothing shameful in nudity. It was when the
gift of integrity had been lost, and passion
awoke in the soul, that man recognized that he
must clothe himself or be ashamed. St. Paul
clearly implies the immunity of our first parents
from the unregulated movements of the pas-
sions. In the seventh chapter of Romans he
reckons the concupiscence with which we have
to struggle as being part of the sin which he
has previously (chap, v.) declared to have
entered into the world through Adam. " Sin,"

54 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

he says, " takiag occasion by the commandment
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence "
(Rom. vii. 8). Concupiscence does not in itself
amount to sin unless we consent to it ; and its
designation as such by the apostle in this
context, can only signify that its presence in
man is a direct result of Adam's fall.

The gift of integrity was bestowed on Adam
in dependence on sanctifying grace. To forfeit
grace was to forfeit integrity also. There is a
natural congruity between the two. The full
subjection of the lower appetites which integrity
confers, and the consequent freedom from
degrading temptations, are gifts which well be-
fit the high dignity of the sons of God. Yet
the two are not necessarily connected. There
is nothing in the nature of things to prevent a
soul from receiving the gift of grace, even
though the complementary endowment of in-
tegrity should be withheld. Thus it is in our
own case. Grace is restored to us in baptism ;
but we are not delivered from the burdensome
struggle with our lower nature.

The state of our first parents as possessed of
integrity and grace is commonly spoken of as
the state of '' original justice." The name is
employed by way of contrast with the term
** original sin."

MAN APAKT FROM GRACE 55

3. God conferred these prerogatives on Adam
with a view to their inheritance by his posterity.
Had he persevered in obedience to God's com-
mands, they would have passed from him to his
descendants. Parents in transmitting human
nature to their children, would have transmitted
the annexed gifts of grace and integrity. When
he fell, he forfeited them not merely for himself
but for his race. If we can imagine a man to
be destitute of some natural endowment, not
merely through an accidental defect, but be-
cause the very tendency and title to the faculty
in question had disappeared from his nature,
such a man, it is plain, would not transmit this
endowment to his children. The case, it is
true, does not occur. Even though a man be
born, say, blind or deaf, the deficiency is always
due merely to some accidental malformation.
The faculty has not been extirpated from the
nature : the title to its possession remains.
Hence in the normal course this man's children
will be born with unimpaired powers of vision or
hearing. But the supposition may serve to
illustrate the case of Adam. Here it was not a
natural endowment that was in question, but a
supernatural gift added to the nature. There-
fore, when the gift was forfeited, the loss was
absolute : no tendency to it remained. It

56 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

followed that his children were born without
it. Man came into the world not in original
justice, but in original sin. For the essence of
original sin lies in this, that man is born de-
prived of that sanctifying grace, which apart
from Adam's sin should have been his. More-
over, with grace, man also lost integrity. He
had refused obedience to God. As part of his
punishment he was to experience the curse of
rebellion within himself. His lower appetites
were in full revolt against the control of reason.
Where there had been harmony and order,
there was discord and anarchy. From hence-
forth his life must be one long struggle against
an enemy within the gate.

The condition of fallen man was indeed piti-
able. He had forfeited all title to supernatural
beatitude. He could not hope ever to enter
God's presence and to be numbered amongst
His children. It is true that he retained the
full complement of his natural powers. His
reason was not shattered, nor his faculty of
free-will lost. He could see the path of duty
and understand his obligations in its regard ; he
was under no constraint to follow the way of
evil. But what prospect was there that he
would long be able to avoid falling into grave
sin ? By the very constitution of our nature

MAN APAET FEOM GRACE 57

the appeal which sensible pains and pleasures
make to us, is more insistent than that of ab-
stract principles, however weighty and vener-
able. And over and above this, fallen man
must contend with the incessant stimulus of
the lower nature. Under such circumstances
it is morally certain that sooner or later he will
yield. Yet he cannot plead that his fall is
necessitated and inevitable. If it were so, there
would be no sin in it. In each single case we
are free : we can resist if we will. But, being
what we are, it is inevitable that, unless God
assists us, we shall before very long cease to do
so. It is no wonder that, viewing human nature
apart from grace, and considering the inability
of the rational will to bring the lower impulses
into subjection, St. Paul exclaims : " Wretched
man that I am ! Who shall deliver me from this
body of death ?" (Rom. vii. 24). The body which
carries with it those imperious appetites which
drag us into sin, may well indeed be called *' a
body of death." Fallen man, if God had left
him unaided, would have been far worse off
than had he been created simply in the state of
pure nature. In that case, as we have seen, he
would have received help of the natural order
to enable him to keep God's law. Now he had
forfeited the supernatural aid of grace, and he

58 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

had nothing to make good the loss. His condi-
tion has been well compared by a recent writer
to that of a man turned out of doors naked on
a winter night. Of him, too, it may be said
that he retains his full natural equipment. But
none would esteem his lot enviable, or have
much hope that he would survive.

God did not leave man without succour.
Even when He imposed the penalty, He gave
the promise of deliverance. Adam's sons from
henceforth must come into the world under the
sentence of disinheritance — degraded from the
high estate to which they had been raised.
But they were still to hope : for the seed of the
woman should undo the evil wrought by the
serpent. Moreover, though the actual coming
of the Redeemer was long delayed, yet in
anticipation of the promised Redemption grace
was offered to all who by faith and repentance
should return to God. From the very hour of
the Fall man might, if he would, recover the
supernatural life which he had lost : he might
be once more a child of God with the prospect
before him of eternal blessedness. Thus it came
about that the patriarchs and prophets of the
Old Law lived and died in grace, and are now,
the Church teaches us, reigning in glory. They
no less than ourselves found deliverance from

MAN APAET FROM GRACE 59

the bondage of sin through the merits of Jesus
Christ.

What we have said will bring home to us
how deplorable is the condition of the pagan
world. There is something to appal the mind
in the thought of those myriads of men who
have never heard the Gospel- message, who know
nothing of the Redemption wrought for them,
nor of the gift of regeneration that might be
theirs. Their state is all the more lamentable,
because, with but rare exceptions, they have not
the least idea that they stand in need of help.
We do not wish to be understood as meaning
that for these salvation is impossible. The
Church is unhesitating in her teaching that
none is lost save through his own fault. In a later
chapter (Chap. XI.) we shall discuss in greater
detail the position of the heathen. Here it is
enough to say that the opportunities accorded
to them are immeasurably less than those which
are offered to such as by God's mercy have been
made members of the Church. They have no
access to those channels of grace which flow so
copiously for all who belong to Christ's flock.
In them original sin is not washed away by
baptism ; and no sooner do they reach the age
of reason than, in the vast majority of cases,
they stain their souls with actual mortal sin.

60 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

So far as they are concerned the havoc wrought
by Adam has not been repaired. He brought
his posterity under bondage to Satan, and in that
bondage they are still held. The prince of this
world holds them as his captives. They belong
to that kingdom of darkness which Christ came
to destroy ; and in the kingdom of heaven
which He set up on earth they have no part.

The actual state of heathen races, as ex-
perience shows it to us, bears out what we have
said. St. Paul has described (Rom. i.) the con-
dition of the pagan world which he saw before
him — that world which possessed so polished a
civilization, in which poetry and the arts had
attained to such high perfection, and philosophy
set forth such lofty moral ideals. All this not-
withstanding, pagan society, he assures us, was
corrupt to the very core. So great was its
corruption, that men had ceased to regard their
sins, however abominable, as blameworthy.
They did not scruple to defend them alike in
themselves and in others (Rom. i. 32). All that
he tells us finds ample confirmation in many a
page of Greek and Latin literature. Nor is it
only of the civilization of which he was himself
a witness that his words are verified, but of all
human society in so far as it has fallen away
from God. Man's passions are everywhere the

MAN APAET FROM GEACE 61

same, and when unchecked by grace have ever
the same dark issue. No better illustration
could be needed than that which is afforded by
our own times. European society has in great
measure rejected those Christian principles on
which it was built up : and in so far as it has
done so, it has experienced a similar moral
corruption.

4. No one can read the New Testament with-
out noticing that the tone of the apostolic
writings is that of men charged with news
almost too good to be true. The very name
they gave to their preaching — the Evangelium,
or ** Good tidings " — gives expression to this
conviction. They speak as men entrusted with
the news of a tremendous deliverance, and com-
missioned to offer a favour so tremendous as to
be almost beyond the mind's power to grasp.
Joy is the characteristic note throughout. We
may cite one or two passages by way of
example. " We speak," writes St. Paul, " the
wisdom of God in a mystery, a wisdom which is
hidden, which God ordained before the world
unto our glory ... as is written : That eye
hath not seen, nor ear heard : neither hath it
entered into the heart of man, what things God
hath prepared for them that love Him " ( 1 Cor.
ii. 7, 10). And again : " To me, the least of all

62 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

the saints, is given this grace, to preach among
the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ "
(Eph. iii. 8). And somewhat similarly St. John
writes : '* We have seen and do bear witness
and declare unto you the life eternal, which was
with the Father and hath appeared unto us.
That which we have seen and heard we declare
unto you . . . And these things we write unto
you, that you may rejoice, and your joy may be
full " ( 1 John, i. 2, 4). And in the same strain
St, Peter says : " You are a chosen generation,
a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased
people : that you may declare His virtues, who
hath called you out of darkness into His mar-
vellous light" (1 Pet. ii. 9).

The exultant tone of the apostles is not based
simply on their hopes of future bliss. It has
regard to blessings which were always theirs.
They see themselves already in possession of
" unsearchable riches " — of the *' things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him."
Nor could it have been otherwise. For the
Gospel-message was nothing less than the re-
storation to man of that sonship which had
been forfeited by Adam. It was the deliver-
ance from a hideous servitude, and the elevation
to a position of splendid privilege. There had,
it is true, been the promise of deliverance. The
memory of that promise had been preserved

MAN APART FROM GRACE 63

among the Jews ; and owing to the dispersion
of the Jewish race, it had latterly aroused ex-
pectation in many lands. The preaching of
the apostles made known to man that the
Redemption was an accomplished fact : that
the dominion of sin was broken : that the
mercies of the covenant were no longer confined
to a single people, but open to all races : and
that all who should accept them were made
sons of God. It is no wonder that such tidings
as this filled the hearts of those who heard it
with triumphant joy.

Not all the privileges of grace were restored
to us. Man still remains liable to suffering ;
and the gift of integrity is withheld. But even
these restrictions manifest the love of God
towards us. Were suffering altogether absent
from our lives, it would be only too easy for us
to become satisfied with this present life ; to
have no desire for the joys of the next world
and for the supreme joy of the presence of God.
The existence of suffering detaches us from this
world, and leads us to fix our hopes on the higher
happiness of the life to come. Moreover, concu-
piscence makes hard fighting a sheer necessity
if we are to save our souls. In this way we
are compelled to the strenuous practice of
virtue, and thus enabled to merit more grace
and thereby obtain a higher place in heaven.

64 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

5. The truths on which we have been dwell-
ing as to the state of fallen nature, and man's
absolute need of Divine grace, if he is to control
the rebellion of his lower appetites, belong to
the very fundamentals of the Christian faith.
They are amongst its most vital elements,
whether we regard it from the point of view of
dogma or as a moral system. They are insisted
on alike in Scripture and in the whole of
ecclesiastical tradition. Writer after writer
points to the sad condition of fallen man as
being the reason which led the Son of God to
become incarnate for us, or appeals to it as a
convincing proof, that, unless we constantly
seek God's help, we shall perish miserably. A
religion which should deny these truths would
not be Christianity at all.

The rejection of the Church's teaching on
these points is a characteristic feature of
Pelagianism, a heresy which sprang up in the
early days of the fifth century, and which was
combated by those two great doctors of the
Church, St. Augustine and St. Jerome. The
cardinal error of Pelagius was his assertion of
the absolute sufficiency of the unaided human
will to fulfil the whole moral law. Man, he
maintained, needs no Divine assistance to enable
him to avoid sin : to admit that we lack power

MAN APART FROM GRACE 65

in this regard, that by reason of original sin we
are too weak to overcome temptations in our
own strength, would be to deny the freedom of
the will, and to fall into necessitarianism.
Starting from this principle he was led to reject
the whole doctrine of original sin. Adam's
fall, he declared, may have injured us by ex-
ample as being the first sin committed on earth ;
but it communicated no taint to human nature.
Consistently with this, he denied that baptism
was necessary to salvation. It doubtless con-
ferred some privilege in the next life, or the
Gospels would not have taught that it was
requisite in order to enter the kingdom of
God : but the infant who died without baptism
would receive eternal life no less than those
who were baptized.

The Pelagian system was condemned by
Pope Zosimus in a.d. 418 ; and an explicit
rejection of its errors was exacted from every
bishop under pain of expulsion from his see.
Twelve years later, in a.d. 430, sentence was
again pronounced against it by the oecumenical
council of Ephesus.

In a work like the present we are not con-
cerned with the history of Pelagianism. But
it seemed necessary to refer to it, because pre-
cisely the same errors are at the present day

0

66 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

widely prevalent. The idea that man's soul is
disabled, and that in order to resist temptation
he needs a new force infused into him, is, out-
side the Catholic Church, almost forgotten.
Religion is reduced to the recognition of God's
sovereignty and the observance of a certain
standard of morality ; but it is not supposed
that there is anything in this beyond the scope
of our natural powers. The idea that man
comes into the world spiritually crippled, and
that the religion of Jesus Christ can remedy
his ills simply because it communicates to him
a new principle of life, has disappeared. What,
for instance, is the view taken of baptism by
the vast majority of our fellow-countrymen ?
It is probably true to say that by most non-
Catholics it is at most held to secure to the
recipient a certain external favour on God's
part. Many, certainly, regard it as strictly
obligatory by reason of Christ's command. Yet
even they do not consider that the rite confers
any internal gift, and would very likely dismiss
as absurd the idea that the child who dies un-
baptized must remain for ever deprived of the
beatitude conferred on those who have received
that sacrament.

There is no mystery as to the source of these
errors. They hav^ their origin in a resi-ction

MAN APART FROM GRACE Q7

against the false teaching of the Protestant
Reformers. Luther and Calvin grossly ex-
aggerated the effects of original sin. They
declared that it had so vitiated and corrupted
human nature, that fallen man is incapable of
the smallest good. Whatever he does, they
said, is sin.^ Indeed, according to Luther, even
after justification, every act that man performs
is stained with sin. The justified are saved,
not because they are delivered from sin, but
solely by the imputation to them of Christ's
merits. A teaching so manifestly false could
not but provoke a reaction. Experience teaches
us plainly enough that fallen man is not v^holly
destitute of virtue : that even bad men are
capable, from time to time, of good and
generous actions. Hence it is no matter of
surprise that those who have been brought up
to believe that this travesty of Christian teach-
ing is the teaching of Scripture as to human
nature, should in preference accept the solution
of rationalism and deny original sin altogether.
But when sanctifying grace and original sin are
both gone, what remains of Christianity is
hardly distinguishable from pure and simple
Pelagianism.

One of the most marked features of thi^

1 Cf Art. XIII. of the Thirty-nine Articles,

68 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

modern view of religion is the almost universal
acceptance of the principle that one religion is
as good as another. This is not looked upon
as a matter admitting of argument or discus-
sion. It is assumed as one of those self-evident
truths which are beyond dispute : and the fact
that Catholics deny it is regarded as a stand-
ing proof of their wrong-headedness. It is
accepted equally by the sincerely pious and by
those who are wholly indifferent to religious
motives. The pious appeal to it as justifying
their charitable hopes for the salvation of all.
There are, they say, many roads to heaven : we
must not condemn those who are not travelling
along the same road as ourselves. The in-
different find in it an adequate excuse for the
neglect of all religion. So indubitable does the
principle appear to the modern Protestant, that
nothing is commoner than to hear the opinion
expressed that foreign missions are the most
futile of enterprises. Why, it is asked, can we
not leave the Mahommedan to serve his God in
his own way ? a sincere Mahommedan is just
as likely to be saved as any Christian : to start
a religious propaganda in a Moslem or pagan
country may cause much political trouble, and
can do no good to anyone.

It is, of CQur^^, ma^nifest that if the Christian

MAN APART FROM GRACE 69

religion has nothing more to offer to its adhe-
rents than a somewhat clearer knowledge of the
moral law than is to be found in other creeds,
there is much to be said for the objection. It
might reasonably be doubted in that case,
whether it is worth while to disturb the rooted
beliefs of a nation in order to confer on it the
problematic benefit of Christianity. Far better,
it would seem, to try to induce them to observe
the law which they already acknowledge as
divine. The preaching of a new faith, even
though it propose a higher ideal, may well cause
more harm by the unsettlement to which it
must give rise, than it will do good.

But in fact this new form of belief, is, as we
have urged, not Christianity at all. It may be
said without irreverence that it would not have
been worth while for God to become incarnate
and die upon the Cross, to give man a gift such
as that. The true religion of Jesus Christ does
not consist simply in an example of the perfect
fulfilment of the moral law. It is a stupendous
gift to our race — the transformation of our
nature by grace, the elevation of man to the
high dignity of a child of God. It alone comes
from God, and it alone can bring man to eternal
beatitude. All other religions are the work of
human imagination, and are powerless to sav©

70 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

us. The Catholic missionary goes out to heathen
countries knowing that he brings with him a
boon that is beyond all price. Were the result
of his life's work but to make a single convert,
his labours would have been well spent. With-
out him that soul would never have obtained
grace, but would have passed out of this life
still in bondage to sin : through him it has been
delivered from Satan and raised to be a par-
taker of the Divine nature. He has achieved a
result of inestimable value.

CHAPTER IV

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES AND THE GIFTS
OF THE HOLY GHOST

1. Principles of Supernatural Action. 2. The Theological
Virtues : Faith, Hope and Charity. 3. The Infused
Moral Virtues. 4. The Seven Gifts of the Holy-
Ghost. 6. The Gift of Wisdom.

1. We have considered grace in its aspect as
a new nature conferred by God on man and
elevating us to Divine order. We have now to
consider in what way that new nature modifies
the activities of the soul — how far these too are
elevated and transformed. It stands to reason
that as is the nature, such must be the actions
that issue from it. If the gift of grace places
man on a new plane of being as a child of God,
it follows that his actions too will be ennobled
and will be of a kind which they were not
before. The fruit must bear the character of
the tree. The acts which flow from grace are
not produced by mere human nature : they
issue from man as incorporated into Christ, as a
branch of the true Vine. The vital force ani-

71

72 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

mating them is the new life which Christ com-
municates to those who have been grafted into
Him.

Here, as in so many cases, there is a striking
analogy between grace and nature. When God
calls a human soul into existence, He endows it
also with principles of action, which we call
faculties. He gives to it the power of thought
and the power of free choice — intellect and will.
In the order of grace something similar takes
place. When God elevates our nature and
makes us heirs of heaven, He gives us prin-
ciples of supernatural activity. He does not
simply confer grace on the soul, leaving its
faculties precisely what they were and desti-
tute of any corresponding elevation. He
ennobles them also, and bestows on them appro-
priate gifts, so that actions of the supernatural
order become their connatural effect. As the
soul is never found without its faculties, so
grace is never found without these related gifts.
They are called the supernatural virtues. The
word ** virtue," howeverj when used in this con-
nection, has, as will appear in the course of the
chapter, a somewhat different meaning from
that which it usually bears now, as e.g., when
we say of someone that he is a man of great
virtue.

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 73

2. Chief among these supernatural gifts are
the three theological virtues, faith, hope and
charity. Many passages of the New Testament
make it abundantly clear that these terms are
employed by the sacred writers to signify per-
manent principles of action, abiding in the soul,
and bestowed by God as part of the endowment
requisite to its new state. Thus in regard to
faith, we are told that Stephen was *' a man
full of faith and of the Holy Ghost " (Acts vi. 3)»
and similarly that Barnabas was ** a good man
and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith " (Acts
xi. 24). In these passages the presence of the
Holy Spirit is beyond question understood to
be a gift which abides in the soul ; and the
parallelism between that presence and the virtue
of faith implies that this is true also of the
latter. The same conclusion may be drawn
from St. Pauls words to the Ephesians : " For
this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ . . . that Christ may dwell
by faith in your hearts" (Eph. iii. 14, 17) ; as
also from the text of the Old Testament, which
the apostle cites on more than one occasion :
"The just man liveth by faith" (Rom. i. 17;
Gal. iii. 11 ; Heb. x. 38). So, too, St. James
tells us that a state of things may come about
in which faith exists in the soul, but is as desti-

74 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

tute of fruit as is a dead tree. " Faith," he
writes, '* if it have not works, is dead " (Jas.
ii. 17). All these passages — and more might
be cited — clearly regard faith as something
which, after the manner of a virtue, remains
continuously in the soul, though it is not always
in actual exercise.

A similar series of texts is found relating to
charity. The epistles of St. John are in great
measure devoted to this virtue, and throughout
them it is treated as a permanent attribute of
regenerated man. ** God is charity," writes the
apostle, '^ and he that abideth in charity abideth
in God, and God in him. In this is the charity
of God perfected in us that we may have confi-
dence in the day of Judgment " (1 John iv.
16, 17). So too, St. Paul: ^' Peace to the
brethren and charity with faith, from God the
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph. vi.
23) ; and elsewhere : *^ I beseech you, brethren,
through our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the
charity of the Holy Ghost, that you help me in
your prayers for me to God " (Rom. xv. 30). In
all these verses it is implied that charity is a
gift from God, an enduring disposition of the
soul, resulting from the presence of the Holy
Spirit within us.

The virtue of hope appears in more than one

THE SUPEENATURAL VIRTUES" 75

passage in close parallelism with faith and love,
e.g., **Let us who are of the day be sober, having
on the breastplate of faith and charity and for
a helmet the hope of salvation " (1 Thess. v. 8,
cf. 1 Pet. i. 21, 22; Ecclus. ii. 8-10). The
three are connected in this way in the well-
known words, which may be said to sum up the
doctrine of Scripture on this point : " And now
there remain faith, hope and charity, these
three : but the greatest of these is charity "
(1 Cor. xiii. 13). In this passage the apostle
has just declared the superiority of charity to
gifts such as those of prophecy or of tongues,
and to the other charismata then so abundant
in the Church. In these concluding words he
tells us that, in contrast to the gifts just men-
tioned, faith, hope and charity are to remain.
The words clearly signify that these three, not
less than prophecy or tongues, are special gifts
bestowed on Christ's members as such : but that,
while a time should come in which the charis-
mata should cease to be part of God's ordinary
providence for the Church, these would at all
times constitute a permanent element in
Christian life.

The infusion of faith, hope and charity is so
clearly part of revealed truth that the Council
of Trent did not hesitate to make it a matter

7^ CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

of formal definition. It is therefore an express
dogma of the Church that in justification we
receive this threefold gift.^ An opinion has
been held by some theologians that charity and
sanctifying grace are identical. On this point
the Council pronounced no decision. But it is
now commonly admitted that the contrary is
the case : that, as we have already said, grace
resides in the soul itself, while charity has its
seat in the will.

It is easy to see what is the part played by
faith, hope and charity respectively in the new
life which we have received. It is through
them that the soul directs its course to the
supernatural end proposed to it, which is none
other than God Himself as the object of our
immediate knowledge and most intimate love.
By faith we believe God's message regarding
the world to come, and accept those unseen
verities as the guiding principles of life. Hope
gives us that confidence of attainment, which
must support us in every step of the long
struggle, and without which we should be
incapable even of beginning it. By charity we
love God with the love due to Him from those
whom He has made His children. And charity
it is that unites us to God, our last end ; for

» Sess. VL, cap. 7 (Denz., 800).

THE SUPERNATUEAL VIRTUES 77

love is a principle of union. The soul that
possesses the beatific vision, is through charity-
linked to God for ever in the embrace of love :
and even in this life charity has power to unite
the soul to God, in the measure which is
possible for those who do not yet behold Him
face to face.

We have, however, yet to explain why it is
needful that these virtues should be super-
naturally infused into our souls ? Are not, it
may be asked, our natural powers sufficient for
the purposes we have just mentioned ? If God
has given man a revelation, surely it is but
natural that man should believe. And if in
that revelation He has promised to aid us in
attaining Himself as our last end, what is to
prevent us from being confident that through
His assistance we shall succeed ? What, again,
is to hinder us from loving Him ? Why then
should He endow the soul with special gifts of
faith, hope and charity ? In what way do they
benefit us ? We shall reply to this question by
a brief account of each of the three virtues.

In the gift of faith the soul receives what we
may term a permanent bent, inclining it to
adhere to the truths of the Christian revelation.
When these have once been accepted as God's
own word on the authority of the Church, the

78 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

mind forthwith holds them with a certitude
which excludes all hesitation or doubt of any
kind. It cleaves to them, as it were, in-
stinctively. It would be easier for it to reject
the most evident natural verities than the
truths of revelation. The certainty the soul
has in their regard is so complete, that it spon-
taneously accepts them as the first principles of
life. If one who has received the gift of faith
should come to disbelieve, it will almost in-
variably be found that doubt has been freely,
not to say forcibly, introduced into the mind:
that the gift has been more or less deliberately
thrown away.

We do not think that anyone who has ex-
perience of faith, as it is found among Catholics,
will contest the truth of what we have said.
Undoubtedly the Catholic, if ordinarily well-
instructed, has ample grounds for his belief.
But no amount of argumentative proof affords
an adequate explanation of the assurance with
which he cleaves to the dogmas of religion.
Even though his life may have belied his pro-
fession, the certainty is there. When death
draws near, it is at once seen that though his
acts were sadly inconsistent with his belief,
that belief is as real and true as ever.

In the ritual for baptism the priest addresses

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 79

the candidate with the words: "What dost
thou ask of the Church of God ?" and the can-
didate is bidden to reply : ** Faith." The
request may well have appeared strange to us.
How can belief be given ? And if it is an adult
who is in question, surely he must already
believe, or he would not be seeking admission
to the fold. In view of what we have said, the
meaning becomes clear. Certainly the cate-
chumen, if he has attained the age of reason,
must already believe with all his heart ; but
the sacrament of regeneration will confer on
him the gift of faith — that permanent principle
which renders his belief firm as a rock and
secure against all storms.

Without this gift our faith would have little
stability. The human intellect tends to dis-
belief; its native bias is to scepticism. No
principle, however certain, is secure against its
solvent force. It asserts its independence by
questioning the validity of the most funda-
mental truths. Moreover, we are at all times
tremendously swayed by public opinion. It is
no light task to retain our belief in what is
denied by the majority. And, speaking
generally, the great majority of men will ever
reject the Christian revelation : an age of faith
is rare. Most men turn away from a doctrii;e

80 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

that imposes such rigorous conditions on those
who follow it. With these hostile influences to
cope with, we could not long keep our hold on
the truths of faith, had not God bestowed this
gift upon us.

As faith protects us from losing sight of the
goal before us, so does hope give to us an
enduring desire of reaching it, and a confidence
of eventual success. Every act of hope is
necessarily composite, containing these two
elements of desire and confidence. And the
supernatural endowment which God bestows
implants in the soul a permanent longing to
possess Him, and the assurance that through
His assistance we shall attain our end. Both
these parts of hope call for our consideration.

We have spoken of hope as being the desire
of God. It is sometimes described as the desire
of eternal life. The two expressions are equiva-
lent : for to the Christian eternal life consists
in the possession of God. If it signified no
more than a continuance of our personal exist-
ence under conditions in which sorrow and
suSering had no part, no supernatural endow-
ment would be needed. Even the unbeliever
would wish for this. But it is otherwise when
the end proposed to us is God Himself. By
pature man is so material in his desires, caring

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 81

so much for things of the body and so little
for things of the spirit that the wish to possess
God could hardly maintain itself in being. In
the negligent and the sinful it would soon be
extinguished. Yet experience shows us that in
the baptized Catholic that wish is almost in-
eradicable. Even those who have neglected
Him for long years retain the desire to attain
Him : and often but little is needed to render
that desire an effective principle of action.
This, the Church assures us, is the fruit of the
gift of hope.

~ Similarly, it is this gift which imparts to us
the assurance of success. God has pledged
Himself to assist us in the struggle. And hope
is the reliance of the soul on God's omnipotence
employed in its behalf It thus becomes a
spring of new vitality within us, enabling us to
make efforts otherwise beyond us. Without
a special endowment animating the soul with
this confidence, we should soon lose sight of
God's promises, and cease to rely upon His
assistance. The recollection of previous falls,
our repeated failure to carry out what we
purpose, the apparent absence of any sign of
spiritual progress — all these things tend to
make success seem beyond our reach. We

should give up the struggle as useless, and

6

82 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

desist from further effort. Yet notwithstand-
ing that the possession of God is so far beyond
the natural faculties of man, the soul which
enjoys hope is buoyed up in its efforts after
beatitude by a confidence far stronger than that
which it could have felt regarding the attain-
ment of its last end in the natural order. There
is, it will be seen, a close parallelism between
faith and hope. The virtue of faith gives to the
intellect a certainty as to revealed truth, not
less than that which it has as to first principles
of natural reason. Hope confers on the will a
confidence of attaining salvation comparable to
that which a man of courage possesses as
regards the successful achievement of those
enterprises which he recognizes to be within
the competence of his natural powers.

Faith and hope, however, are surpassed in
dignity by charity, the virtue ** by which we
love God above all things and our neighbour as
ourselves for God's sake." There are many
different kinds of love. There is the love which
is borne to each other by man and wife, the
love of members of the same family, the love of
fellow-citizens, and so on. It is readily seen
that in every case love has its basis in the fact
that in one way or another the lives of the two
parties are associated together : and that the
various kinds of love differ one from another

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 83

according to the different kinds of union on
which they are founded. The union between
brother and sister differs from that between
natives of the same city or country, and that
again from the union which binds together
master and servant. The ground of love is
different in each case, and therefore the love
itself is of a different kind. Love is due to God
from man simply on the score of creation, and
apart from all consideration of the gift of grace :
for the dependence of the creature on the
Creator for all that he possesses, even for
existence itself, affords a basis for love. But
there can be no comparison between the love
which has this origin and the infinitely higher
love which is due from those on whom the gift
of grace has been bestowed. They are more
closely united to God than is the child to its
earthly father. They have been made partakers
of His nature and are destined to share His
blessedness. It follows that they owe Him a
love such as corresponds to the wonderful
relation which binds them to Him. This love,
in the very nature of things, is one which is
beyond the power of human language to des-
cribe, beyond the capacity of the human heart
to give. Only if God confers new and higher
powers upon our wills, can we give to Him the
love that such a union demands. In order that

84 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

we may be able to pay this debt, our souls
together with grace receive the virtue of super-
natural charity.

It should be observed that when we say that
by charity we love God above all things, we do
not except even our own selves. If our love
for God is real, we care more for God than we
do for ourselves. At first sight it may seem
difl&cult to understand how this can be. Yet it
is true to say that, even if God had left man in
the state of pure nature, without either grace
or charity, reason would have prescribed that
he should love God above himself For to the
creature God is the sole source of all good.
Whatever good there is in him comes to him
simply and entirely in so far as he belongs to
God ; and apart from God he is cut off from
all good. In view of thi^ relation right order
requires that man should love God first and
foremost as the source of all his good, the end
for which he exists, the ultimate motive of all
his action : and that all other things, even
himself, should be loved in reference to God,
and in so far as they contribute to God's glory.

We may, perhaps, be helped to realize how
the love of God can thus not merely outweigh
but absorb the love of self, if we consider how
the virtue of patriotism will lead men to give

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 85

their lives for their country. All men recognize
that a citizen, who is worthy of the name,
should be ready, if need arise, to make that
supreme sacrifice. To his country he owes
everything. She has made him what he is.
Her past history and her national traditions
are embodied in him. Through her, however
humble his circumstances, he has dignity and
worth. Isolated from her he would be a mem-
ber severed from the body to which it belongs,
a branch torn from the parent stem. Just as
the hand instinctively exposes itself to danger
to save the body, so will any good citizen be
ready to expose his life to save his country.
Not in himself, but in her, lies his chief good :
and hence his love for her exceeds the love he
feels for himself

Often the welfare of the country or the tribe
is visibly embodied in a single individual, e.g.^
in the king. In that case love of country is
centred in the person of the prince, and thereby
acquires all that passionate intensity which
only seems possible in regard of a personal
object. History is full of examples of men who
have given their lives without an instants
hesitation for the king or the chief who had
this claim on their devotion.

All this applies in an immeasurably higher

86 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

degree to man in his relation to his Creator.
There is no vestige of good, however remote,
which does not flow to him from that Source.

Were not his mind clouded and his will
clogged by sin, the love of God would, by an
imperious necessity, be the ruling passion of his
life : and the intensity of that love must in-
crease with the measure of good which God has
bestowed. If, then, in return for the gift of
existence and blessings of the mere natural
order, God s rational creation is bound to
love Him above all things, the elevation of our
nature by grace, the gift of a Divine adoption,
demands that the love should be immeasurably
higher. It is through the virtue of charity
that we are enabled to pay that debt.

We have already insisted on the important
truth that the soul in grace recognizes and
accepts God as its last end. In other words,
its ruling purpose is so to live as eventually to
attain to Him. It is through charity, and
through charity alone, that we can thus direct
our whole life to God. Only if we love Him
above all things, does He become our chief aim.

No other virtue but charity can do this.
Hope cannot effect it. For though hope
desires God beyond all created goods, it desires
Him, not for His own sake, but for ours — that

THE SUPERNATUEAL VIRTUES 87

we may be happy in possessing Him. By
charity we love God for His own sake : if we
love ourselves, it is because, in however small a
degree, we too may contribute to God's glory.

So soon as charity has made God our last
end, its influence is felt in every part of our
life. Our main purpose, if we are in earnest,
determines all our activities. In all our
decisions this enters into our consideration ;
and what is incompatible with it, we forthwith
reject. Moreover, it thus becomes the oflSce of
charity to set the other virtues in operation.
If God is our last end, we must practise the
virtues that we may thereby please Him and
achieve our aim. It is this which was in the
apostle's mind when he wrote : ' * Charity is
patient, is kind : charity envieth not, dealeth
not perversely, is not puffed up," etc. (1 Cor.
xiii. 4 sqq.). He does not mean that charity is
to be identified with each of the long list of
virtues which he enumerates. Charity is not
the same thing as patience or as humility.
But where charity is found, there all these
virtues will be found too : for it will call them
one and all into action. Hence it is not with-
out good reason that in Catholic theology it is
customary to speak of charity as the queen of
the virtues,

88 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

But it may be said that surely such a disposi-
tion is only for the saints. Can it really be the
case that it is found even in the imperfect
Christian, who has just made his confession and
thereby recovered the grace he had forfeited by
mortal sin ? Does he really love God so well
that this love furnishes him with the great
motive of existence ? The Church emphatically
replies that it is so. However far he may have
fallen, this is his state when he is restored to
grace : and that he should pass out of this state
it is needful that by a deliberate mortal sin he
should have broken with God, and placed his
last end in something else. When the sinner
comes to confession, it is an essential condition
that by a genuine sorrow for the past and pur-
pose of amendment he should have cast out of
his soul whatever is incompatible with the love
of God. The sacrament of penance infuses both
grace and love as abiding dispositions of the
soul. Nor can the disposition remain idle and
nugatory ; it must issue in explicit acts.

Before we leave the subject of faith, hope
and charity, a word must be said on their dis-
tinctive name of the *' theological " virtues.
The explanation of this term is to be sought in
the fact that the acts of these virtues, and of
these alone, have God for their immediate

THE SUPEENATUEAL VIETUES 89

object. It IS God whom we know by faith,
God whom we hope to possess, God whom we
love. The acts of the other virtues may be
done for God's sake ; but the actual object is
not God. If I practise temperance, the object
of my act is the control of my bodily appetites
as reason or faith prescribes ; if I practise
justice, my object is the rendering to each man
his due. The only acts of virtue which tend
immediately and directly to God in Himself, are
acts of faith and hope and love. It is true that
these virtues have also secondary objects. By
charity we love our neighbour for God's sake ;
by hope we confidently look not merely for the
beatific vision, but also for the means which
are requisite to enable us to reach our goal ; by
faith we accept all the truths contained in
God's revelation, and not those alone which
concern Him in Himself. But the primary
object of the virtues is God alone ; the second-
ary objects only fall within their scope because
of the relation in which they stand to God, the
primary object.

3. In the judgment of most theologians, there
are adequate reasons for holding that in justifi-
cation not merely do we receive faith, hope and
charity, but that the soul is further endowed
with the full complement of moral virtues

90 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

required for its perfect equipment. These are
commoDly spoken of as the '* infused virtues " ;
not that the theological virtues are not also
infused, but that their relation to God has
secured them a name peculiar to themselves.
Amongst the infused virtues a special place is
taken by prudence, justice, temperance, and
fortitude, inasmuch as the four groups into
which the virtues fall take their distinctive
characters from them. For this reason they
are commonly called the cardinal virtues. The
infused virtues differ very materially from the
natural virtues that bear the same name. The
moral excellence which the natural virtues con-
fer is that which befits a man simply in so far
as he is a member of civil society. They aim
no higher. The moral excellence of the super-
natural infused virtues is that which befits a
man as an adopted child of God, an heir of
heaven and a member of Jesus Christ. The rule
which determines the standard of purely natural
virtue is unassisted human reason ; the rule
determining supernatural virtue is the revela-
tion of God and the internal illumination of the
Holy Spirit. We may illustrate the contrast in
the case of temperance. The virtue of temper-
ance, as the philosopher conceives it, is a control
of the bodily appetites such as will best conduce

THE SUPERNATURAL VIRTUES 91

to the health of the body and mind, and thereby
render the man a perfect citizen. Anything
that falls short of this, or any ascetic practice
which goes further, he reckons as a positive
fault. The religion of Jesus Christ opens our
eyes to a temperance of a higher order, which
is not satisfied with merely controlling the
appetites, but adopts the standards of Christian
asceticism, ** chastising the body and bringing
it into subjection " (1 Cor. ix. 27). The Catholic
recognizes that the aim set before him is some-
thing higher than merely to be a perfect mem-
ber of a civil State ; it is to be a perfect member
of a heavenly kingdom. And he believes that
by striving after the higher ideal, he will
achieve the lower all the more adequately than
if he had made it alone his object. The ration-
alist philosopher derides the austerities of the
saints as mere blind fanaticism. The ordinary
pious Catholic, even though he could no more
hope to imitate the heroic penances of the saints
than he could hope to paint like Raphael, or to
write poetry like Shakespeare, nevertheless
knows that it is the rationalist, and not the
saint, who is blind. For he, too, possesses the
infused virtues, and is striving in his own degree
after that Christian perfection of which the
saints afiFord the most glorious examples.

92 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Here, however, a question suggests itself,
similar to that we have already put as regards
charity. In what sense can it be said that all
the justified possess the infused virtues ? Is it
not only too evident that many a penitent
sinner has no habits of virtue at all, but on the
contrary not a few vicious habits ; and that
even with the help of grace, it needs every
effort of which he is capable to hold them in
check ? The answer to this difficulty is not far
to seek. As we said at the beginning of this
chapter, the sense attached to the word
" virtue " in this connection is somewhat
different from that in which the term is
commonly used. In ordinary parlance virtue
signifies an acquired habit, rendering acts of
the kind in question easy and agreeable to us.
In theology it does not refer to habits such as
these. It signifies an inclination or tendency
given to the intellect or will, and conferring on
them a capacity {virtus) for such acts. For the
acquisition of the natural virtues we have
sufficient provision apart from any special
endowment. The intellect shows us what is
good according to the laws of the natural order,
and the will, if sound and healthy, follows the
dictates of reason. But for the cultivation of
supernatural temperance or fortitude or any

THE SUPERNATUKAL VIRTUES 93

other of the infused virtues, nature is insufficient.
We possess no inborn tendency in that direc-
tion ; and lacking this tendency, we could
never hope to acquire facility in their exercise.
When we say that justification always carries
these virtues with it, we simply signify that
this connatural tendency invariably accompanies
the gift of sanctifying grace. This inclination
is perfectly compatible with a physical bias
towards some fault, contracted by frequent
falls. The task before the penitent sinner is
little by little to drive out the vicious bias, and
on the basis of the infused inclination to build
up an acquired habit of a very different kind.
In the early stages of his struggle the acts of
virtue will be hard, whereas it would be easy
enough to return to vice. Yet it is none
the less true that he possesses the virtue, and
that the contrary vice has been cut off at the
root.

What we have said as to the justified sinner
will explain in what sense it can be said that in
baptism the infant receives the gift of the
supernatural virtues. The undeveloped capacity
of producing such acts is implanted in his soul.
When reason dawns, if the passions are checked,
and the lower nature is not allowed to prevail
over the higher, the character will develop

94 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

along these lines, and the tendencies conferred
in baptism will find their issue in Christian
sanctity.

4. It remains to speak of yet another endow-
ment bestowed on us with grace — viz., the seven
gifts of the Holy Ghost. The prophet Isaias,
speaking of the promised Messias, says of Him :
*' The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him :
the spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the
spirit of counsel and of fortitude, the spirit of
knowledge and of piety : and He shall be filled
with the spirit of the fear of the Lord " (Isa. xi.
2, 3). And the fathers of the Church tell us
that not merely did Christ our Lord receive
these gifts in His Sacred Humanity, but that
He confers them in various degrees on all His
followers.

Among the Scholastic theologians there was
some discussion as to whether the seven gifts
are to be identified with the three theological
and four cardinal virtues. St. Thomas Aquinas,
the most eminent amongst them, held that the
respective series were far too difierent for such
a supposition to be admissible : and that in
such a matter the only safe plan was to keep as
close as possible to the data of revelation.
Hence he was led to assign a difierent oflSce to
the gifts from that which is fulfilled by the

GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST 95

virtues. Nothing has been defined on the sub-
ject ; but the general tendency of theologians
has been to accept the reasoning of St. Thomas.
He points out that certain of the operations of
the soul in a state of grace seem to require the
presence of another principle of action besides
the virtues. We know that the wills and
minds of those who are united to God receive
numerous impulses from the Holy Ghost, and
are constantly producing actions due to His
direct influence. Since this is part of God's
regular course of providence, it would appear
reasonable to suppose that the soul in grace
possesses certain permanent dispositions render-
ing it responsive to the Divine impulse. This,
therefore, is the office which with every show
of probability is assigned to the gifts.

We shall point out later (Chap. VII., § 2) how
important is the part which they play. Here it
must be sufficient to note that the action of the
gifts is complementary to that of the virtues in
their respective spheres. Wisdom is the comple-
ment of charity ; understanding and knowledge
of faith ; counsel of prudence. The gift of piety
corresponds to justice : fortitude to the virtue
bearing the same name : and the fear of the
Lord, to the two virtues of temperance and
hope. It would carry us beyond our limits to

96 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

discuss the gifts in detail. Something, however,
must be said of the gift of wisdom, since it
bears intimately on the subject of our next
chapter.

5. The gift of wisdom is an experimental
knowledge of God^ having its origin in the love
of charity. God has given us three ways of
coming to the knowledge of Himself. The
first is by the use of our natural reason : the
second is by faith : and the third is the experi-
mental knowledge of love. The gift of wisdom
does not teach us fresh truths about God : it
makes our knowledge of Him a personal know-
ledge. We have pointed out above that love
of its very nature is unitive : that through it
those who love each other are made one : and
that the love of charity establishes even in this
life a true union between God and the soul.
It is in virtue of this union that we may enjoy
intimacy with God, and possess in His regard
the knowledge of experience. There is no need
to labour the point that experimental know-
ledge is different in kind from that which is
derived from testimony or from reason. The
little child who has not yet the use of reason,
knows his mother after this manner. He is too

1 "Notitia experimentalis," Summa^ la, q. 43, art. 5,
ad. 2 ; I. S., d. U, q. 2, a. 2, ad. 3.

THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST 97

young to know about her, bub his knowledge of
her is none the less very real. He feels her
love for him : and he returns love for love. If
he is deprived of her, he sheds tears. St.
Thomas when treating of the gift of wisdom,
reminds us how wide is the scope of experi-
mental knowledge. He points out that when
the mind possesses it in regard to any subject,
it can often dispense with reasoning and arrive
at its conclusions instinctively. Thus in
matters relating to chastity, he says, the man
who has made a study of Ethics forms his
judgment by process of reason ; while a man
who knows nothing of Ethics, but who has cul-
tivated the virtue of chastity, will reach a true
conclusion, because he has, so to speak, attuned
his soul to that of which he judges.^ This
truth holds good in many spheres. A man may
possess a wonderfully accurate judgment in art
or literature or music, who nevertheless can
assign no adequate reason for its pronounce-
ments. He judges, not by deducing conclusions
from fixed principles, but instinctively.

This experimental knowledge of God is the

foundation of Christian mysticism. It is not,

as might be imagined, a privilege belonging to

the saints alone. There is no one who is in a

' Summa, 2a, 2ae, ^. 45, art. 2.

T

98 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

state of grace, who does not possess the power
to attain some measure of this knowledge. We
may be permitted to quote some words, written
on this subject by a competent authority :

" How does it happen that the mystical
knowledge that comes by love remains, for the
greater part of Christians, but rudimentary and
undeveloped ? How is it that we have so little
of that ' intimate, conscious, constant union
with God,' which is the outcome of true love,
and which constitutes the mystic life ? Whose
fault is it ? God's or our own ? Has God per-
chance failed to make advances to us and to
show us the way ? I answer emphatically. No !
The good God has made loving advances to us,
for there is not one of us w^ho has not tasted, at
some time or other, that God is sweet. It may
have been when we made our first Communion,
either on the day itself or after. At other
times, again and again, God has allured us by
making us feel the joy of being near Him heart
to heart. Who has not had such spiritual ex-
periences, and after all, when we look back
upon our past life, are they not the happiest ?
Even Napoleon I., at the height of his glory,
confessed to his astonished generals that the
happiest memory of all his eventful life waa
that of the day of his first Communioa,

THE GIFTS OF THE HOLY GHOST 99

" In reality, then, we have all had a taste
and a beginning of the higher knowledge of
God, the mystical experimental knowledge,
communicated directly into the soul by God
Himself. A taste and a beginning, but nothing
more. Why is this ?

" Because we have not kept up the loving
intercourse with God to which we were invited.
We are to blame : the fault is ours."^

1 The Mystical Knowledge of God^ by Dom Savinien
Louismet, O.S.B. (London, 1917\ p. 52.

CHAPTEK V

THE INDWELLING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

1. The Teaching of Scripture. 2. God's Presence in all
Things. 3. His Presence to the Blessed in Heaven.
4. His Presence in the Just. 5. The Doctrine of
Appropriation.

1. When grace is given to a soul, the Holy-
Spirit takes up His abode within it : nor does
He leave that soul, unless grace has been for-
feited by mortal sin. The gift of His personal
presence is sometimes spoken of as uncreated
grace in contrast to the created grace with
which we have been dealing hitherto.

There are few doctrines which are more clearly

or more frequently taught in Holy Scripture

than this of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost

in the souls of the just. St. Paul again and

again refers to it as one of the elementary

truths of the Christian religion, known and

acknowledged by all. It is this, he assures us,

which justifies our confident hope of eternal

beatitude : ^ ' Hope confoundeth not. Because

the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts
^--''"' ""^^ inn

8T. MICHAEL'S

COL-'v.f.Qc

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 101

by the Holy Ghost, who is given to us " (Rom.
V. 5). This, he urges, should furnish us with a
tremendous motive for the conquest of sins of
the flesh : for since God dwells within us, sins
of this kind assume the character of sacrilege :
" Know you not that your members are the
temple of the Holy Ghost, who is in you, whom
you have from God : and you are not your own.
. . . Glorify and bear God in your body "
(1 Cor. vi. 19, 20). This Divine Guest, he
affirms, bears witness within us that we are
indeed God's children, and inspires us with the
filial confidence which our adoption warrants :
" You have not received the spirit of bondage
again in fear : but you have received the spirit of
adoption of sons, whereby we cry : Abba, Father.
For the Spirit Himself giveth testimony to our
spirit that we are the sons of God " (Rom. viii.
15, 16). Elsewhere, too, he speaks of us as
having been '' anointed " with the Spirit (2 Cor.
i. 21) ; and in another place he calls Him '' the
earnest of our inheritance" (Eph. i. 14).

These few citations and references will be
enough to show how fundamental a place the
doctrine holds in the apostolic teaching. The
fathers of the Church are equally explicit. The
following striking passage from St. Cyril of
Alexandria, in which the gift of grace is attri-

102 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

buted to the presence of the Holy Ghost in our
souls, is but one of many similar utterances,
which might be cited. " When the Holy Spirit
copies on our souls the Divine Essence, He does
not do so after the manner of an artist, who
paints something different from himself. Not
in that way does He bring us to the likeness of
God. But being God Himself, and proceeding
from God, He impresses Himself invisibly on
the hearts of them that receive Him as a seal is
impressed on wax : and thus by their communion
with and resemblance to Himself, He reproduces
in their nature the beauty of the archetype,
and shows man once again in the image of
God." 1

An extremely interesting passage on this
subject occurs in the autobiography of St.
Theresa. Her knowledge of the doctrine was
derived in the first instance, not from any
instruction, but from personal experience. " I
was, at the beginning," she relates, '' so ignorant
that I did not know that God was present in
all things. But since during this kind of prayer
I found Him so mtimately present to my soul,
since the sight which I had of this presence was
so clear, it was absolutely impossible for me to
have any doubt on the point. Some persons

1 Thesaurus, 34 (P.G. Ixxv., 610).

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 103

who had not much learning told me that God
was only present by His grace. I was so certain
of the contrary that I was unable to accept
their view, and it caused me some trouble. A
very learned theologian of the Order of the
great St. Dominic delivered me from these
doubts. He told me that God was really pre-
sent in all things, and he showed me how He
communicates Himself to us. This filled me
with the most lively consolation."^

2. Yet a difiiculty at once suggests itself to
us. God surely is present everywhere. His
omnipresence or, as it is often termed, His
immensity, is one of those elementary truths to
which even the untutored reason bears witness.
The child just learning the outlines of the faith
finds no difficulty in understanding this. It
would be necessary to go low in the scale of
beliefs to find a religion which taught that
God's presence was restricted to certain locali-
ties. In what sense then can it be said that it
is the peculiar privilege of the just that God
should dwell within them ? In one and all of
the passages which we have cited, it is assumed
that the presence of the Holy Ghost is a gift
conferred in justification, which they did not

^ Viede SainU Thirhe, c. 18, traduction de R. P. Bouix,
6.J., cited in Froget, De V inhabitation du S. Esjjiity p. 82.

104 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

possess before, that at that moment God des-
cended upon them and took up His abode within
them. Indeed Scripture expressly says of sin-
ners : ''The Lord is far from the wicked " (Prov.
XV. 29). It is clear that this inhabitation of
the soul by the Holy Ghost is something
different from God's general omnipresence. It
may be termed His extraordinary presence in
distinction from His ordinary presence. And
we shall be in a better position to understand
its nature, if we first explain briefly the manner
of His ordinary presence in creatures.

When we aflSrm that God is everywhere, that
however vast be the space He has created or
may yet create, He is in every portion of it, we
do not, of course, regard God as being in space
after the manner of corporeal things, so that
one portion of His being is in one part of space,
and another in another part. There is, indeed,
a system of philosophy, widely held at the
present day, which comes near falling into this
error. According to Pantheism the universe is
God manifesting Himself in phenomena. There
is no ultimate distinction between the Creator
and the creature. They are related as the
thinker and the thought ; and since it is held
that the existence of the thinker without the
thought involves a contradiction, it follows that

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 105

there can never have been a time when there
was no universe. This theory, it is true, teaches
that God is everywhere, but only in the utterly
inadequate sense which we have indicated. From
its principles it would follow that God is not
whole and entire anywhere, but that He is, so
to speak, distributed through the universe,
which is not really other than Himself. Very
different is the account of God's immensity
given by the great theologians. They tell us
that the distinction between the Creator and
creature is absolute : that God existed before
there was any space, for space is nothing but
the dimensions of that universe which He has of
His own free will called into being. But so
long as that world exists, He is whole and
entire in every part of it. For He must needs
be acting in every being that exists : if He
were not at each instant giving existence to all
things, and enabling each one to exercise its
due activities, they could not be. But where
God is acting, there God is ; the power with
which He acts is not something different from
Himself. Thus he is present everywhere as
the universal cause of all things. It is thus
that He may be viewed as being everywhere in
space. He is not more widely diffused, because
the universe is great : nor would He be bound

106 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

within narrower dimensions, were it smaller
than it is. He does not need space. It is the
things in space which stand in need of Him : for
were He not acting on them, they would cease
to exist.

We find it hard to imagine how God can
be present whole and entire in all parts of
space ; for our imagination is limited by the
impressions of our external senses. But an
illustration, which may render the concep-
tion more easy, is furnished by the mode in
which our soul is present to our body. The
soul is in the body. But the soul is not ex-
tended : it is not distributed in the body so
that it can be said to have parts. If we lose a
limb, we do not thereby lose a portion of our
soul. The soul is present in its entirety to
every part of the body. The relation of the
Creator to the created universe is, to be sure,
different from that of the soul to the body.
God is not the soul of the world. But the
illustration, however halting, may assist the
mind to grasp a truth which we cannot repre-
sent to the imagination.

As the universal cause of being, God is in all
created things by presence, by essence and by
power. He is in them by presence^ because He
acts and works in each: and where the work

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 107

is, there must of necessity the workman be.
He is in them by His power \ for the Divine
power cannot be at a distance from the activity
which it exerts. And He is in them by His
essence : for in God essence and power are
identical : they are not, as in us, distinct
the one from the other. Since He is present
by His power, He is present by His essence
also.

3. Is there any other mode in which God can
be present to creatures — a mode in which He
can be present to some only and not to others ?
Yes : there is the presence which is granted to
the Blessed in heaven. That presence is a pre-
sence by knowledge and by love. He can, if
He will, grant to His friends on earth a pre-
sence of a similar character, so that even here
the first faint dawn of the light of heaven
shines upon their souls. Beyond these two
there is but one other way in which God can be
present to a creature — that which was realized
at the Incarnation of our Lord, when He
assumed a created nature into His own Person-
ality. But with this presence — that of the
hypostatic union — we are not here concerned.
Our purpose is to speak of that great privilege
of the justified which we term the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit : and to show that by this it

108 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

is signified that God is present to the souls of
the just by supernatural knowledge and super-
natural love.

But, it will be said, surely this is not a real
presence at all. A person may be present to
me in thought and may be in my heart by love,
even though he himself be far away or dead.
The terms are, indeed, often employed in oppo-
sition the one to the other. We sav of some
one that he is present to our thoughts, thereby
signifying that he is not present really. If we
explain the indwelling of the Holy Ghost after
this fashion, are we not reducing it to a mere
metaphor ?

The diflSculty is a genuine one. It is, of
course, true that so far as mere natural know-
ledge goes, the presence of an object in thought
in no way involves a real presence. But it
may be shown that this is not so in regard to
the supernatural knowledge of God of which
we are speaking. The full proof of this would
involve us in a philosophical discussion unsuited
to the present work. But the point is one of
such profound interest that we cannot leave it
altogether unnoticed. We must, however, be
content to indicate in the briefest way how
this conclusion is established.

When we say that presence in thought is not

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 109

a real presence, this is because the object of
thought is not present to the naind in its con-
crete, reality, but by an idea or concept. For
me to perceive an object by my senses it must
be actually present : it is impossible for the eye
to see, or the ear to hear, or the sense of touch
to feel things that are out of their reach. But
for me to think of a thing the idea suflSces.
Indeed, even if the object is present to me and
falls under my sense, the mind cannot know it
without a concept. The judgments which the
mind forms about the thing, are formed within
itself and are, in fact, its concepts. In this lies
the great difference between sense-perception
and intellectual knowledge. The perceptions of
sense are direct and immediate. I see the thing
itself: I do not see my sight of the thing. Intel-
lectual knowledge, on the other hand, is indirect.
I know the thing by knowing the judgment
'formed with my mind. But, wonderful as it
may seem, when the soul beholds God, it will
know Him not by the aid of a concept formed
within itself, but immediately and directly.
Just as the eye gazes directly on the thing it
sees, so will the mind gaze directly upon God.
And just as when we see an object with our
eyes, that object is truly present to us, so when
the mind knows God, not mirrored in a con-

110 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

cept, but in Himself, God will be really present
in a new way to the mind. In this way the
knowledge of God which the Blessed possess in
heaven is at one and the same time a presence
to thought and most truly a real presence.
He is not present to them vicariously by a con-
cept, but in Himself.

That God should be thus known results from
the fact that He is infinite in all perfections.
Just as He is infinite in being, He is infinite in
intelligibility. Other things are not intel-
ligible till the mind by forming a concept of
them has brought them on to the mental plane,
and thus made them objects which thought
can know. But God, just as He possesses ex-
istence of Himself, so also possesses intelli-
gibility. In His case there is no need that the
mind should supply the conditions which render
its objects suitable for thought. Provided then
that God bestows upon a soul the capacity to
know Him, it can know Him without any in-
termediary concept. It can behold Him **face
to face." This capacity to know Him, as was
pointed out in Chap. II., is far beyond the scope
of the natural endowments of any creature
however exalted. It can only be ours through
a special and supernatural gift — a new power
infused into the soul. This gift is palled the

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIEIT 111

light of glory — a term adopted by way of con-
trast to the light of reason and the light of
faith, through which knowledge of God is
granted to us here below.

It remains to speak of the supernatural love
which joins the Blessed to God. Love is a uni-
fying force. Without love we are self-centred.
Love enables us to transcend the limits of
self — to identify ourselves with another. We
love another when we reckon him as one with
ourselves, when his interests become our in-
terests, and his good is as our good. It will,
perhaps, be said that this union is a union of
affection, not a real union. But, in fact, love,
if it be genuine, does not stop short here. It
demands a real union also. Friends who love
each other well, crave for each other's society.
A son whose life's work is abroad, will travel
round the world that he may spend a short
time with the parents whom he holds so dear.
Love, says St. Thomas,^ involves a three-fold
union. It involves, first, the union which is its
basis : for every love has its origin in some
similarity or connection between those who love.
Secondly, there is the union in which love con-
sists— the bond of affection. And in the third
place, there is the union which love effects : and

^ Summa, la, 2ae, q. 28, art. 1, ad. %

112 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

this union is a real one. Supernatural love
does not fall behind earthly love in this respect.
Indeed, as it is the most perfect form of love,
the union which it produces should be yet
closer and more intimate than any which
earthly love can bring about. And such, in
fact, is the case. The soul which has received the
Divine adoption and has attained to bliss, loves
God, not as the Creator between whom and
His creature there is an impassable gulf, but as
the Father, who has raised it to share His
own nature and has admitted it to intimate fel-
lowship with Himself God has given Himself
to the soul, and by the love of charity the soul
cleaves to Him as its very own. The two are
united for ever by an indissoluble bond. Hence
it is that the sacred writers do not hesitate to
speak of the soul as the spouse of God. Thus
St. Paul draws a parallel between the union of
husband and wife on one side and that of God
and the soul on the other. Husband and wife,
he reminds us, do but become one flesh ; but
'*he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit"
(1 Cor. vi. 17).

4. What has been said will, we believe, have
shown clearly that we are not speaking in
metaphors, when we say that God is present to
the Blessed in heaven through knowledge and

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 113

love. This presence is in every way as real as
His presence to all creatures as the cause which
sustains them in being, and without whose aid
they could exert no activity of any kind. It
is a presence of a different order, but no less
actual. But we have yet to show that even in
this life God is present in a similar fashion to
all who are in grace : that in virtue of the
supernatural endowments which accompany
grace they enjoy a personal union with Him,
which is a veritable commencement of their
future beatitude. This truth is expressly
taught by Pope Leo XIII. in his beautiful
Encyclical [Divinum illud munus) on Pentecost,
in which he savs : '* That wondrous union which
is known by the name of Indwelling differs only
in regard of its state, from that by which God
confers beatitude on those who have entered
heaven." It is this point with which we must
now deal.

As regards God's presence to us during this
life, love plays the chief part. The charity
which adorns our souls now is the same charity
which we shall possess in heaven. Faith and
hope will pass away ; but the virtue of charity
will abide. The gift through which we love
God here, is the same as that through which
we shall love Him in the next life. Even now

8

114 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

our love to God is the love of children to their
Father. We are His, and He is ours. We do
not, indeed, enjoy the glory and the beatitude
appropriate to that high dignity ; but the union
is ours already. Certainly the acts of love
which we shall be able to make in heaven will
be far more intense than any which are possible
to us in this life, in which our knowledge of
Him is so obscure and imperfect. But they will
proceed from the very same virtue. And where-
ever that virtue of charity is found, God has
given Himself to the soul : He has chosen it as
His spouse. Though as regards knowledge,
"we walk by faith and not by sight," the soul
that is in grace possesses God, and knows that
it possesses Him.

Moreover, even though, while we live here,
faith is a necessary condition of our probation,
God has found a way to give Himself to us by
supernatural knowledge. We have seen that
wherever charity is found, there also is the gift
of wisdom. The function of that gift is nothing
less than this. Through it, as we saw, the soul
possesses a personal and experimental knowledge
of God. A knowledge of this character is, it is
evident, a veritable presence of God to the soul.
In certain souls it reaches a sublime degree.
These are those who, by a special and exceptional

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 115

act of God's favour, have learned the secrets of
mystical prayer, and have been raised, it may
be, even to ecstatic love. Such, however,
are at all times the few. But the privileges
conferred by the gift of wisdom belong in some
measure to all who are in grace. For each and
all are united to God by love, and know Him,
not merely by the hearsay of faith, but, in virtue
of that union, by experience.

It is in this way that the greatest of the
Church's theologians explains for us how God,
who is in all things by His essence. His pre-
sence and His power, can nevertheless in a
peculiar manner make the souls of the just His
dwelling-place. He show^s us that it is given to
those who are in grace to know and to love
God, not after the manner of mere creatures,
but as those who enjoy the rights and the
privilege of children ; and that this knowledge
and love constitute a veritable presence of God
within the soul.

5. Is this presence peculiar to the Holy
Ghost, or is it common to the Three Persons of
the Blessed Trinity ? Our Blessed Lord's words,
** If anyone love Me, he will keep My word, and
My Father will love him ; and We will come to
him, and will make Our abode with him " (John
xiv. 23) seem to teach clearly enough that all

116 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

the Three Persons are present. Further, it is a
theological principle, universally recognized as
certain, that in the Blessed Trinity there are no
differences save such as are involved in those
relations of origin by which the Three Divine
Persons are alike constituted and distinguished.
There can be no connection between these rela-
tions of origin, and any Divine action which is
external to the Godhead. Hence it follows
that all God's activity in regard to creatures —
and inhabitation is such an activity — must be
common to the whole Trinity. It is not the
Holy Spirit alone, but the Three Divine Persons
who dwell within our souls.

We need not feel surprise that the inspired
writers should speak as though the ofiice were
peculiar to the Holy Ghost. Alike in Holy
Scripture and in the works of the fathers cer-
tain attributes which are common to the whole
Trinity are habitually assigned to one of the
Divine Persons in particular. Thus omnipotence
is specially attributed to the Father, wisdom to
the Son, love and goodness to the Holy Spirit.
We meet with expressions such as that the
Eternal Father created the world by His omni-
potence, through the wisdom of the Son and the
love of the Holy Ghost. It would never be
said that He did so through the wisdom of the

INDWELLING OF HOLY SPIRIT 117

Holy Ghost and the love of the Son. This
" appropriation," as it is termed, of a common
attribute to a single Person, is in no way in-
tended to signify that it belongs to that Person
exclusively. It is a figure of speech, employed
because the attribute in question is of such a
character as to illustrate the special relation
borne by that member of the Blessed Trinity to
the other two Persons. Hence there is good
reason why in theological terminology it should
be employed of that Person alone : since by
these specialized attributions men are helped to
realize the central mystery of the Divine pro-
cessions. The data of revelation seem to put it
beyond doubt that the Son is begotten by an
act of the Divine intellect, and that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son by
an act of the Divine will. This being so, we
can readily understand why wisdom should be
appropriated to the Son, and love and goodness
to the Holy Ghost, for wisdom belongs to the
mind, while it is the will which is the source of
love. God's gifts are the work of the Divine
love ; and grace is rightly reckoned as having a
special title to be called God's gift, for it is an
act of His generosity beyond and above the
nature with which He endowed us. It is for
this reason that our sanctification in all its

118 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

aspects, and above all the supreme gift by which
He bestows Himself to dwell within us, is attri-
buted in a peculiar manner to the Third Person
of the Blessed Trinity.

This explanation of Divine inhabitation given
in this chapter, which is drawn from the pages
of St. Thomas, is not the only one offered by
Catholic theologians. It is a point on which
various views have been held. But it does not
seem too much to say that this is the only ex-
planation, which, while it accords with all that
both reason and theology teach us as to the
nature of God, gives us an adequate notion of
the tremendous privileges implied by the truth
in question.

CHAPTER VI /

THE ACQUISITION OF SANCTIFYING GRACE

1. Dispositions requisite for Justification. 2. Need of
Actual Grace. 3. Sanctifying Grace conferred in
Different Degrees. 4. Protestant Doctrine of Justifi-
cation by Faith alone. 5. Sufficient and Efficacious
Grace.

1. The means by which God bestows sanctify-
ing grace upon our souls is, as we have seen, the
sacrament of baptism. It is by this sacrament
that a man is born again as a child of God.
Moreover, the Church assures us that there Is
no human being who is not capable of receiving
the benefits of baptism. The infant, in whom
the powers of reason are as yet undeveloped,
the idiot, in whom they must remain dormant
throughout the whole of this life, may possess
the endowment which opens the gates of heaven
to them, no less than the man who enjoys the
full use of his faculties. But the conditions in
the two cases are different. Those who cannot
exercise their free will are justified by the mere
application of the sacrament. God does not

119

120 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

demand of them that which it is beyond their
power to give. It is otherwise with the reason-
ing adult. For him the mere passive reception of
baptism is insufficient. None of God's reason-
ing creatures, neither angel nor man, may enter
heaven unless he is willing to co-operate in the
work of his salvation. The sacrament will only
avail him if he seeks it with certain dispositions
of mind. In the first place he must have faith ;
he must believe God's message to man and His
promise of supernatural life through Jesus
Christ. He must also have a fear of God's
judgments, a hope of His rewards, and a genuine
sorrow for past sins.

It is easy to see why these particular disposi-
tions should be required before grace can be
infused into the soul. Apart from faith man
does not and cannot know anything of the
supernatural end for which God destines him :
revelation alone can make this known to him.
Unless he has heard God's message and believes
it, it is out of the question that he should take
a single step towards its attainment. No man
strives to attain that which is totally beyond
his reach. Hence faith, as the Church assures
us, is " the commencement, the foundation, and
the root of all justification."^ Sorrow for past

' Trid., Sess. VI., cap. 8 (Denz., 801).

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIKED 121

sins is no less essential. For the very purpose
of the gift of grace is to unite our wills to God
by charity. There can be no such union as
long as our will adheres to that which God has
forbidden. Unless we recognize the gravity of
our faults and repent of our disobedience, there
can be no room for charity in the soul. The
love of what God forbids is incompatible with
the love of God. Fear and hope are, normally,
requisite in order to bring us to sorrow for the
past. It needs a struggle to forsake our previous
life and seek God ; and were it not for the fear
of the tremendous penalties which God's revela-
tion makes known, and for the hope of the
rewards which He promises, we are hardly
capable of the effort involved. It may indeed
happen that in some favoured souls faith is
immediately followed by love. If that is so,
there is for them no need of explicit acts of fear
or hope, or even of sorrow for the past : love
would supply the place of all. If anyone loves
God, his love contains equivalently the hope of
gaining God, the fear of losing Him, and regret
for past sins. But this case must be reckoned
as altogether exceptional. Ordinarily speaking,
men climb the ladder of sanctity by degrees.
Fear first moves them to forsake sin : then the
hope of a future reward exerts an ever increas-

122 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

ing influence upon them : and only after this
do they recognize that God is more precious
than His gifts, and so are led to love Him with
their whole heart.

That the conditions of justification are such
as we have indicated is the plain teaching of
Scripture. We are assured again and again
that there can be no salvation unless we believe
in the revelation of Jesus Christ. '^ He that
belie veth and is baptized," says our Lord, *' shall
be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be
condemned " (Mark xvi. 16); and again : " If you
believe not that I am He, you shall die in your
sin" (John viii. 24). Thus, too, St. Paul in
answer to the question of the gaoler at Philippi,
** What must I do to be saved ?" replied : '* Be-
lieve in the Lord Jesus ; and thou shalt be saved,
and thy house." As regards the necessity of
sorrow for sin, we have our Lord's words : " Ex-
cept ye repent, ye shall all in like manner
perish" (Luke xiii. 3, R.V.). And St. Peter,
speaking to the Jews converted by the miracle
of Pentecost, expressly declares repentance to
be an essential preliminary to the grace of
baptism : " Repent ye, and be ye baptized every
one of you in the name of the Lord Jesus unto
the remission of your sins : and ye shall receive
the gift of the Holy Ghost " (Acts ii. 33, R.V.).

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 123

The importance of fear and hope appears from
the appeal made to these motives in the preach-
ing both of our Lord and of the apostles. The
great alternative that lies before us — the glory
and joy of heaven or the awful punishments of
hell — is constantly urged by them as a means
to bring men to abandon their sins and seek the
justification offered to them. Thus our Lord
exhorts His hearers to that profession of belief
in Him without which justification is impossible,
in the following terms : ** Whosoever shall con-
fess Me before men, him shall the Son of Man
also confess before the angels of God. But he
that shall deny Me before men, shall be denied
before the angels of God " (Luke xii. 8, 9).

From the earliest days of Christianity the
Church demanded these conditions of those who
sought baptism after they had attained the age
of reason. She admitted to that sacrament
none save those who were prepared to yield an
unhesitating belief to the Christian revelation
as taught by her. The profession of the Church's
creed has at all times been an essential part of
the baptismal rite. Nor is she less insistent
on the need of repentance. She exacts from
the catechumen a solemn renunciation of the
world, the flesh, and the devil. And she has
always sought to bring men to desire the grace

124 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRA.CE

bestowed in justification by instilling into them
the fear of punishment and the hope of reward.
From what has been said it might perhaps be
concluded that until baptism is actually ad-
ministered, justification is altogether unattain-
able. This, however, is not the case. Baptism
undoubtedly is, ordinarily speaking, the means
by which the man who believes Christ's revela-
tion and deplores his past sins, receives the gift
of sanctifying grace. But if the believer is
moved even before baptism not merely to
repentance but to the pure love of God, if, that
is, his sorrow is the sorrow of pure contrition,
then grace is forthwith conferred upon him, and
his soul is justified antecedently to the admini-
stration of the sacrament. Our Lord's words
are clear on this point : " If anyone love Me, he
will keep My word, and My Father will love
him ; and We will come to him, and will make
Our abode with him " (John xiv. 23). This, of
course, does not imply that those who attain
justification in this way can dispense with
baptism. The reception of the sacrament re-
mains necessary by reason of God's command,
because it is the gate leading to the reception
of the other sacraments, and because it is the
external sign of incorporation into the Church.
But the Church has always recognized that

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 125

where actual baptism is impossible, its place
may be taken by '* the baptism of desire." If a
man believes Christ's revelation and has a
genuine love of God and a desire of receiving
baptism, then, even though he should be cut oif
by death before its reception, his soul will be
among the saved.

2. Faith, repentance, fear of God and hope
of God are very far from being mere conditions,
the fuljEilment of which God demands of us as a
preliminary to our justification, but without
any internal connection with grace. They are
a positive preparation of the soul for the recep-
tion of that gift. Faith in God's promise of
salvation through Christ is the soul's first step
towards its supernatural end, and fear and hope
and repentance are the next steps in the same
great journey. In theological terminology they
are all of them works conducing to salvation
{opera salutaria). Now it is a truth of revela-
tion that man's natural powers are wholly in-
competent to do anything towards the attain-
ment of celestial beatitude. Man viewed apart
from grace was destined, as we have seen, for a
happiness of a less exalted character. His
faculties, without a supernatural elevation, are
not such as to enable him to pursue a super-
natural aim. Even faith, the first step of all,

126 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GEACE

is God's gift. Thus St. Paul writes to the
Ephesians : " By grace you are saved through
faith : and that (f.e., your salvation through
faith) not of yourselves : for it is the gift of
God " (Eph, ii. 8) ; and elsewhere : '*Unto you
it is given for Christ not only to believe in
Him, but also to suffer for Him " (Phil. i.
29). Precisely the same teaching is found in
the Gospels, where our Lord says to the Jews :
'^ No man can come to Me except the Father
who hath sent Me draw him. . . . There
are some of you who believe not . . . therefore
did I say to you that no man can come to Me,
unless it be given him by My Father" (John
vi. 44, 65, 66), Similarly when St. Luke tells
us in the Acts of the Apostles of the conver-
sion of the woman Lydia at Philippi, he says :
*' Whose heart the Lord opened to give heed
unto the things which were spoken by Paul"
(Acts xvi. 14, R.V.). What is true of faith is
true of the other acts which lead on towards
justification. St. Paul tells us in general
terms : ** It is God who worketh in you both to
will and to accomplish" (Phil. ii. 13). This
truth has been explicitly affirmed by the
Church on several occasions. In the fifth cen-
tury it was maintained by St. Augustine
against the Semipelagians of Marseilles. These

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 127

men repudiated the heresy of Pelaglus that
man can save his soul without grace ; but
they contended that the first step towards sal-
vation, faith, or at least the desire for faith, is
purely our own act. The great African doctor
showed that such a view was contrary to the
express teaching of revelation. Since then the
doctrine has been defined in more than one
council. It will be sufficient for our purpose to
quote the canon in which the opposite error is
condemned by the Council of Trent : *' If any
one shall maintain that without the prevenient
inspiration of the Holy Ghost and without His
assistance, man can believe or hope or love or
repent, as is required in order that he should
receive the grace of justification : let him be
anathema" (Sess. VI., can. 3).^ The aid thus
conferred upon us belongs to the order of grace;
for, like sanctifying grace itself, it elevates our
actions to the supernatural plane. Since, how-
ever, it is not the gift of an abiding state, but
simply of a particular activity of the soul, and
is temporary in its character, it is distinguished
by the name of actual grace. It will be ob-
served that in the decree just quoted, the

1 ((

Si quis dixerit, sine praeveniente Spiritus Sancti
inspiratione atque hjusadjutorio hominem credere, operari,
diligere aut pa3nitere posse, sicut oportet ut ei justiiicationis
gratia conferatur: A.S." (Denz., n. 813.)

128 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Church does not teach that belief as such is an
impossibility without this supernatural assist-
ance. Had it done so, it might be argued
that, by the Church's own admission, there
must be some want of cogency in the argu-
ments for Christianity as they are presented to
us : since otherwise they would be capable of
convincing the intellect and producing belief
even without a special assistance on God's part.
The Church has ever maintained that the evi-
dences for the truth of Christianity are amply
suflBcient for all minds. But it declares that
belief produced without the aid of grace would
not be such as to help to the attainment of
justification. It would be of no more avail for
that end than is that of which St. James speaks,
when he tells us that " the devils also believe
and tremble" (Jas. ii. 19).

The immediate effect of actual grace is, as we
have seen, to produce in the soul those acts of
the mind and the will which are the prelimin-
ary to sanctifying grace. Revelation does not
inform us in what precisely it consists : and the
point has given rise to some discussion. Some
theologians hold that it is wholly constituted
by the acts themselves. But weightier argu-
ments, as it would seem, can be advanced for
the view that it is a positive endowment tern-

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIEED 129

porarily infused into the soul, elevating it to
the supernatural order and determining it to
the production of the acts in question.

Under the influence of actual grace the mind
and will are moved, as it were, spontaneously
to faith and repentance. Apart from any deli-
berate choice on its own part, the soul finds
itself turning towards God. But God does not
force us to accept His gift. In the moment
when a man becomes conscious of these motions
of his soul, he may, if he so chooses, refuse his
consent to them, and choose the path of dis-
belief and impenitence. On the other hand, he
may welcome them : in which case they are
brought to completion no longer as indeliberate
acts, but with the full and deliberate consent
of the will. During the former stage, the super-
natural assistance is termed gratia excitans :
after the recipient has yielded his consent, it is
termed gratia adjuvans} Actual grace, it will
be observed, differs from sanctifying grace in
this important point : that its reception is not
dependent on any preparation on our part.
The sinner is not bound to produce certain

^ Gratia excitans signifies literally " arousing grace.'^
It is so called because its office is to arouse the quiescent
faculty to supernatural action. But we have no generally
accepted rendering for the term in English. Gratia adjuvant
signifies " assisting grace."

9

130 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

definite dispositions in himself before he can
hope to receive any actual grace. God gives
His actual graces even to the greatest sinners,
that He may bring them to repentance. Doubt-
less they are given more abundantly to those
who pray and take the other means to which
the Church exhorts men. But every step of
this kind presupposes the gift. Were it not
for the influence of actual grace within him, the
sinner could do nothing to return to God.

3. It is a general principle that the degree in
which a perfection can be realized is limited by
the capacity of the subject receiving it. The
principle is exemplified in many spheres. An
artist may conceive the ideal of some picture.
But the realization of the ideal will be con-
ditioned by the materials at his disposal. He
cannot achieve more than they admit of : if he
has only one or two colours, he cannot depict
some richly variegated scene. So, too, if a man
sows seed in his garden, the character of the
soil exercises a determining influence on the
development of the plant. A perfect plant
demands a soil adapted to it. Or to take our
example from another quarter: if a man endeav-
ours to impart some branch of knowledge to a
boy, he recognizes that the result must be
conditioned by the intellectual capacity of his

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIKED 131

pupil : if he is concerned to teach him some feat
of physical skill, his success will depend on the
accuracy of eye and dexterity of hand that his
disciple possesses. Grace, here, the Church
assures us, follows the analogy of nature, and
shows us the same principle operating in the
supernatural order. In the case of those who
obtain justification after they have reached the
age of reason, sanctifying grace is not given in
an equal degree to all. The amount bestowed
depends on the manner in which they have
disposed themselves for its reception. If they
have used the actual grace given them to the
best advantage, if their faith is fervent, their
hope ardent, their sorrow for sin intense, they
will receive it in ample measure. If on the
other hand they have shown but little zeal in
preparing themselves for it, and their dispo-
sitions scarcely go beyond the minimum which
God requires, they will receive far less. It is
otherwise, of course, with those who receive the
gift in infancy through baptism, and who are
not called to co-operate in the work of their
justification. It is practically certain that to
all of these is given an equal degree of grace in
that sacrament.

4. Such is the doctrine of the Catholic
Church as to the mode in which man, if he has

132 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

reached years of discretion, must attain justifica-
tion. It seems necessary to add something
regarding the Protestant errors on this subject,
since Luther's teaching on this point is the
basis on which the whole of his system was
erected. We have already given some account
of his teaching as to justification, and explained
how, according to him, it does not involve any
change in the soul of the justified, but consists
solely in the imputation to him of the merits of
Christ : that, in other words, God does not
make us just, but reckons us as just by a
juridical fiction. And we have pointed out
that this strange doctrine was the creation of
Luther's own mind : that there is no vestige of
support for it in Scripture or in Christian
tradition. As regards the mode in which man
secures this imputation of Christ's merits to his
soul, he asserted that one thing only was
necessary — namely, faith. This is the famous
doctrine of justification by faith alone, which is
still regarded as unquestionably true by the
majority of those who adhere to one or other of
the Protestant sects. Faith, however, does not
with Luther signify what Catholics understand
by the term — viz., belief in God's revelation.
According to him, man has faith when he pos-
sesses a confident trust that his sins have be©n

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 133

forgiven by God for Christ's sake. Thus, in
the authoritative Lutheran formulary entitled
the Confession of Augsburg, it is laid down as
the accepted Protestant teaching that **men
are justified for Christ's sake by faith, when
they believe that they are received into God's
favour, and that their sins are forgiven for
Christ's sake, who by His death made satisfac-
tion for our sins."^ As thus used the term
signifies confidence in God's mercy rather than
faith properly so called. A further fundamental
difierence between the Lutheran and the
Catholic teaching is found in their respective
teachings as to the function of faith in pre-
paring the soul for justification. According to
Catholic doctrine, as we have seen, faith and
hope are supernatural acts, produced under the
influence of the Holy Spirit, and exercising a
renovating influence on the soul, which is thus
rendered a fit subject for the reception of God's
gifts. This preparation becomes complete when
the soul rises from faith and hope to love. All
this the Reformers denied. According to them
there is no amelioration of the soul preparatory
to justification. Faith is the sole condition
asked of us : and faith exercises no renovating
influence. It is simply an instrument by which
^ Confess. Aug.^ art. 4, fol. 13.

134 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

we secure the imputation of Christ's merits.
To use Calvin's simile, it is comparable to an
earthen pot, which, filled with coin, makes a
man rich, but has no value of its own.

The doctrine of justification by faith alone
stands or falls with the view that justification
is purely external. The rejection of the one
error involves that of the other. When it is
seen that justification is not a juridical fiction,
but a veritable transformation of the soul, and
in all those who have attained to years of
discretion a transformation that takes place
voluntarily, it follows of necessity that the acts
which prepare the way for it are acts by which
a man forsakes evil and chooses good, and
which thus dispose the soul for God's gifts.
Moreover the texts which have been cited as to
the need of hope and repentance show how
erroneous is the contention that faith alone is
required of us.

What, however, it may be asked is to be said
as to the passages in which St. Paul appears to
attribute justification entirely to faith? These,
as all are aware, have ever been employed as
the chief weapon in the Protestant armoury.
Appeal is made to texts such as the following :
*' We account a man to be justified by faith
without the works of the law" (Rom. iii. 28);

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIEED 135

" By grace you are saved through faith : and
that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God :
not of works, that no man may glory " (Eph.
ii. 8, 9); and *' [Christ Jesus] was delivered
for our sins, and rose again for our justification.
Being justified therefore by faith, let us have
peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ *'
(Rom. iv. 25, v. 1). If, it is urged, faith is but
the first of several acts which God demands of
us, and without them is powerless to procure
our justification, the apostle could not speak as
he does. Indeed he goes out of his way to
assure us that we must not regard our good
works as having any power to render us accept-
able to God: he blames the Jews for this very
error, that they did not rely on faith, but
believed that their good works contributed to
the result.

It would be idle to deny that St. Paul's
words are open to misconstruction in the
Lutheran sense. From the first, it would
appear, some interpreted them in this fashion.
Of some such error St. Peter seems to speak,
when he says that in the epistles of his fellow-
apostle " are certain things hard to be under-
stood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest
as they do the other Scriptures to their own
destruction" (2 Pet. iii. 16).

136 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Yet when considered in connection with the
remainder of his teachings, St. Paul's meaning
is clear enough. He was engaged in refuting
the teaching of the Jewish Rabbis, according
to which man can find acceptance with God on
the score of good works performed by his own
natural powers. God had given Israel the law
on Mount Sinai. Those who should keep the
law — and man, the Rabbis maintained, can do
so if he chooses — were just before God. Their
justice was in the strictest sense their own ;
and for it they could claim a reward, as their
due. God inscribed their good works in His
book of record, and would most surely pay
them that to which they were entitled. This
view St. Paul declares to be utterly false. We
cannot, he affirms, attain justice by our own
good works. It must come as God's free gift
through grace: He must renovate us and make
us just : and the sole road to this justification
is through faith in Jesus Christ. To the justi-
fication earned as a matter of right by works,
he opposed this justification by grace through
faith. But he nowhere implies that faith is the
sole condition demanded of us. It is the primary
and essential requirement which determines
the nature of the whole subsequent process.
Whatever else we do, we do in faith : whatever

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 137

we receive, we receive as Christ's followers.
Hence the apostle is naturally led to speak of
us as being ** justified by faith." In a whole
series of passages he makes it clear that the
moment at which the gift of justification is act-
ually conferred is the baptism of the convert :
that besides faith repentance is needed as a
condition precedent to its reception : and that
without the subsequent practice of good works
it will infallibly be lost. Indeed he expressly
states that in those who are justified faith must
be combined with charity, and must issue in
works. ** In Christ Jesus neither circumcision
availeth anything nor uncircumcision : but faith
that worketh by charity." To interpret the
passages in which he declares that we are justi-
fied by faith, as though they signified that
faith will effect this result without other con-
ditions of any kind, is wholly to misunderstand
their meaning.

It is worth noting that Luther did not
scruple to falsify the text of Scripture in order
to provide his doctrine with the support which
the words of the apostle refused to give him.
In the verse ** We account a man to be justi-
fied by faith without the works of the law"
(Rom. iii. 28), he inserted the word ** alone,"
so that in his version it ran, *'We account a

138 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

man to be justified by faith alone," etc. The
action was characteristic of the man.

The doctrine of justification by faith alone
inevitably led to a widespread neglect of the
moral law. It offered a cheap and easy way to
heaven, without the need of the practice of
those moral virtues on which the Catholic
Church had insisted so strongly. History
bears witness to the appalling moral corruption
which followed the adoption of the new religion
in those countries which made profession of
Protestantism. Luther himself in later life
often complained bitterly that the people who
had received the new teaching were in every
way worse than they had been before they
forsook the ancient faith. -^ Never was there a
case which presented a more striking veri-
fication of our Lord's words : " Beware of false
prophets, who come to you in the clothing of
sheep, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
By their fmits you shall know them " (Matt,
vii. 15, 16).

5. Actual graces are distinguished by theolo-
gians into Efficacious and Sufficient graces. By
a sufficient grace is meant a grace which con-
fers on the recipient the capacity to form a
particular good action, but which nevertheless

1 See e.g. Grisar's Life of Luther (E.T.), iv. c. 24 (1915).

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 139

remains without effect, because he refuses to
avail himself of it. An efficacious grace, on the
other hand, is a grace which not merely gives
the capacity, but which through the consent of
the will, effects the good act in view of which
God bestowed it. Thus we may suppose a
case in which two men have presented to them
the arguments in favour of the Catholic reli-
gion, and God by an interior impulse of grace
moves each of them towards an act of faith.
One rejects the impulse : the other believes.
The former is said to have received a sufficient
grace : the latter an efficacious grace. It will
be noticed that efficacious graces have a right
to be called " sufficient " : for were they not
sufficient, they could not achieve their result.
But custom has fixed the sense of the words :
and by a sufficient grace we always mean one
which de facto is not efficacious.

These terms are often applied to graces con-
sidered as gifts of God destined in the Divine
purposes to bring about this or that result.
We are taught both by Scripture and by the
tradition of the Church that God can by His
gifts of grace procure the consent of any created
will, yet so that the consent shall not be by
constraint but shall be a free act. '* The heart
of the King," says the Wise Man, ** is in the

140 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GEACE

hand of the Lord : whithersoever He will, He
shall turn it " (Prov. xxi. 1). This truth is
set before us by our Lord, where He says :
*'My sheep hear My voice . . . and they shall
never perish, and no one shall snatch them out
of My hand. My Father, which hath given
them unto Me, is greater than all : and no man
is able to snatch them out of the Father's
hand" (John x. 28, 29, RV.). Here He
declares that nothing can frustrate the Divine
purpose regarding the salvation of the elect.
If this be so, it follows that God must be able
by grace to direct the choice of the will as
seems good to Him. We are here, it is clear,
brought in contact with the profound mystery
of God's government of the world. Why in
certain cases He converts the rebellious will to
Himself and in others permits the soul to
reject the solicitations of grace — these are ques-
tions as to which we must be content to remain
ignorant, and to adore the dispositions of
Divine wisdom. It must be enough for us to say
with the apostle : '* 0 the depth of the riches
of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God !
How incomprehensible are His judgments, and
how unsearchable His ways " (Rom. xiii. 33).
Though it was necessary to treat this point
in the present chapter, the same principles hold

HOW JUSTIFICATION ACQUIRED 141

good for all actual graces, for those conferred
on us when we are in the state of justification,
as well as for those which we receive to aid us
to the attainment of sanctifying grace.

The question as to how efficacious grace acts
upon the will so as nevertheless to leave it free,
has been ardently debated in the theological
schools. The Dominican Order furnished the
chief defenders of one view, the Jesuits of
another. The controversy involves issues of
no small importance ; but since it does not
immediately affect the revealed doctrine of grace,
there seems no call for us to enter upon it here.

CHAPTER VIL

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE.

1. Divine Aid Necessary for Perseverance. 2. Function
of the Gifts of the Spirit. 3. Final Perseverance.
4. Avoidance of Venial Sin.

1. The high privilege of sanctifying grace
may be forfeited by sin. As long as a man
lives, it is possible for him to renounce
God's service and follow another master : our
probation only ends with death. Hence the
precious gift carries with it a very grave respon-
sibility. We must guard our treasure vigilantly.
Above all we must be resolved that when
death comes — even if it overtake us suddenly
and without warning of any kind — it shall find
us children of God, and not servants of the
devil. It will avail a man nothing to have
acquired grace, if in his folly he flings the gift
away. Indeed, those who receive the Divine
adoption and afterwards renounce their sonship
are in worse case than those who know nothing
of the benefits won for them by Christ. "It
would have been better for them," says St.

U2

PEESEVERANCE IN GRACE 143

Peter, " not to have known the way of justice
than, after they have known it, to turn back
from that holy commandment which was
delivered to them. For that of the true proverb
has happened to them : the dog is returned to
his vomit : and the sow that was washed to
her wallowing in the mire" (2 Pet. ii. 21,
22). In this chapter we propose to consider
the conditions of perseverance.

It might seem that those who enjoy the gift
of grace are fully equipped for the struggle
against sin, and stand in need of no special
assistance on God s part over and above the
general providence due to all that He has
made. They have been endowed with the vir-
tues of faith, hope and charity. They believe
what He has revealed : they desire Him above
all things : they love Him as the supreme
good — the end for which they were created and
for which they exist : and they possess new
and supernatural principles of action in the
infused moral virtues. Surely, it may be said,
they have in all this an equipment which will
render them more than a match for the temp-
tations that must befall them. Their weapons
are adequate : nothing else can be wanted save
a good will.

In one sense this is true. Those who are in

144 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

grace possess, absolutely speaking, the power
to overcome all temptations. Even the small-
est degree of grace confers strength capable of
withstanding any solicitation to evil whether
external or internal. But it is one thing to
have the power ; it is another thing to employ
it. Notwithstanding our ample endowment, it
is most certain that if God does not assist us
in a special manner, we shall sooner or later
yield to temptation and forfeit grace. For as
we have seen, the gift of grace does not
restore to us that complete harmony of our
powers which belonged to Adam in the state of
innocence. The lower elements of our complex
nature are not, even in the regenerate, in full
subjection to the reason, acting only with its
permission. Desire and repugnance do not
await reason's bidding. They drag us this way
and that : and the rational will is taxed to its
utmost to keep them under control. We are,
further, often misled through the ignorance
which is another of the results of original sin.
Our judgment is clouded by concupiscence and
by the false maxims of conduct prevalent
around us. And there is yet another source of
error in our complete uncertainty as to future
events. The course which we judge to be the
safest may lead us straight to the breakers

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 145

and the rocks. Exposed as we are to these
many dangers there is no hope of our persever-
ance, unless God brings His omnipotence and
omniscience to the aid of our weakness and
blindness. Where He sees that the interior
promptings, which are the normal effect of the
supernatural virtues, would in our case be only
'* sufficient grace," He must supply what w^
lack and give us such additional assistance as
will constitute an efficacious grace. He must
make good the deficiencies of our prudence,
directing our course and protecting us from
unforeseen dangers. He must employ a special
providence in our regard, removing from our
path temptations which He sees would prove
fatal to us. Or, if He judges best that we
should meet the temptation, then the Holy
Spirit must intervene, enlightening our under-
standing to see what is right, and inclining our
wills to follow it, thus leading us to victory,
where otherwise we should have suffered defeat.
Thus St. Thomas says: ''For the attainment
of our supernatural end, towards which we
are moved by our rational nature as perfected
— though incompletely so — by the theological
virtues, the power of reason by itself is
insufficient, unless it be aided from on high by
the iuspirationg and impulses of the Holy

10

146 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

Ghost : as it is written : Whosoever are led by
the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God
(Rom. viii. 14)" (Summa L, IL, q. 68, art. 2).
The supernatural actions of the soul in grace,
it thus appears, are not in all cases attribut-
able to the infused virtues as their immediate
cause. Many of them are due to actual graces
which are sent us by God according to our
needs, and which are so many special gifts over
and above the permanent endowment of virtues
which we can always use as reason may direct.
These actual graces differ in one important
respect from the actual graces bestowed on those
who are destitute of sanctifying grace with a
view to its acquisition. The latter have a
two- fold function ; they do not merely incite
the recipient to a particular good work : they
also temporarily elevate the soul to the super-
natural plane enabling it to perform a super-
natural act. In the regenerate there is no
need for any such elevation, for the man who
possesses sanctifying grace is already a child of
God. The actual graces conferred on him are
simply impulses — motions impelling the soul to
this or that act. It must not, however, be
imagined that actions thus performed are not
free, and that the soul is purely passive in
their regard. Were it so, they could not be»

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 147

reckoned to our account as good or evil. No
act that does not proceed from our free will is
imputable to us. The graces of which we
speak put the soul upon the way to the per-
formance of a free act ; but the soul is under
no constraint : it is in its power to reject the
grace conferred on it.

2. It is here, St. Thomas tells us, the gifts
of the Holy Spirit exercise their function.
They render the soul responsive to the touches
of the Holy Ghost : and when He impels us to
some good action, it is through them that His
impulse is received. In regard to the par-
ticular work of which we are speaking, viz.,
the protection of the soul in grace from the
dangers inseparable from our present state, two
of the seven, the gifts of counsel and of fear,
play a part of very great importance and seem
to call for special mention.

It belongs to our nature as rational beings
that we should forecast the future, and shape
our course in view of the ends we have at
heart. Reason and faith show us the relative
value of ends, so that we may aim not at some
merely temporal good, but at our eternal beati-
tude in the possession of God. It is the office
of prudence to select the most appropriate
means for the attainment of this, as of every

148 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

other end. Prudence must direct a man in his
choice of a career, in the formation of friend-
ships, and in every enterprise, be it great or
small, which he may undertake. Yet the
powers of prudence have their limits : it cannot
secure us altogether from error. Future events
are, for the most part, beyond our calculation :
even the wisest find that their best -considered
judgments were wide of the mark. Here,
then, it is that the just are assisted by the gift
of counsel. Through it the Holy Spirit sup-
plies what is lacking, and guides them to a
right decision, where otherwise they would have
erred. It need not, of course, happen that the
decision thus formed gives to their undertaking
the immediate success they would have wished.
But it will help them to their supreme end :
and compared with this, all else, as they them-
selves are the first to own, is of little moment.
Thus human prudence, even at its best, needs
the gift of counsel to perfect its work : and only
those can be esteemed truly prudent who
implore the Holy Ghost thus to help them as
long as they remain amid the manifold dangers
and temptations which beset them here.

Hardly less important than the gift of coun-
sel is the gift of the fear of the Lord. The
fe^V q{ God may be of two kinds — the fear of

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 149

offending Him or the fear of punishment.
Both play their part in the work of our salva-
tion. But it is the former alone — filial fear, it
is called — which is reckoned as belonging to
the gifts of the Spirit. This fear is proper to
the sons of God. He is the Supreme Good,
whom they trust eventually to possess as their
own : and even apart from any thought of the
punishments which He will inflict on sinners,
they fear to separate themselves from Him by
sin. Fear of punishment grows less and less
as the love of God increases in the soul; but
filial fear, the fear of offending so good a God,
grows greater and greater. There is no man
who has not again and again been saved from
losing the gift of sanctifying grace by this fear.
When temptation is urgent, when we are al-
most yielding, then God in His mercy moves
our hearts by this fear, and the struggle ends
in victory, not in disaster.

The gift of fear corresponds to the virtue of
hope. The desire to possess God as our own
finds its complement in the fear lest we should
lose Him. But it stands also in intimate
connection with the cardinal virtue of temper-
ance. The attraction exerted upon us by the
pleasures of sense in their various forms is so
strong, that it is in their regard we most

150 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

especially need the graces conferred through
this gift. Were the virtue of temperance our
sole weapon against these temptations, we
should not be equal to the struggle.

3. In connection with this subject the
question of final perseverance claims particular
attention. By final perseverance is signified
continuance in a state of grace till the end of
our earthly probation. All those who die in
grace are said to receive the grace of final
perseverance. The term is applied to the infant
who only lives long enough to be baptized, and
to the man who after a life of sin makes a
death-bed repentance and is absolved in articulo
mortis. These, however, may be viewed as
abnormal cases. Ordinarily final perseverance
involves two elements : (1) that its recipient
should have continued for some length of time
in a state of grace and in the practice of good
works, and (2) that death should find him in
this state.

Among the errors into which the Semi-
pelagians fell was the opinion that a man's
final perseverance depends wholly on himself
If a man is in grace, then no special Divine
intervention, they maintained, is required to
secure his perseverance : this depends on his
own efibrts entirely. To refute this opinion

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 151

St. Augustine wrote his treatise De Dono
Per sever antiae, maintaining that perseverance
is God's gift, and that without His special help
given for this end it is beyond men's power.
Our prayers themselves, he urged, furnish a
suflScient proof of this. If perseverance
depended, not on God's mercy, but on our own
eflforts, it would be idle to petition God to give
it to us. We do not ask for that which we can
have without asking. Another defender of
Catholic doctrine of this point, in a document
which has been recognized by the Holy See as
a faithful exposition of the Church's teaching,
enunciates the same argument in the well-
known form Lex supplicandi statuit legem
credendi (*'The rule of prayer proclaims the
rule of faith"). ^ He appeals to the Church's
liturgy which has come down from the most
primitive periods of her history, and points out
that in its prayers supplication is made that
God will confer His gift on all the faithful.
There can be no room for doubt that the
prayers thus consecrated by the immemorial
use of the Church are the accurate embodiment
of her belief. Hence to suppose that we can
secure perseverance by our own efforts without

^ Indiculus, cap. 11 (Denz., JS^tic^., 139).

152 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Divine assistance, is manifestly contrary to her
creed.

A very little consideration will show us that
perseverance in both its elements is a gift from
God. What has been already said in this
chapter will render this evident as regards
continuance in grace. We have shown that
we cannot hope to avoid a grave fall save
through the help of a special providence and of
eflScacious graces conferred upon us on those
occasions when God foresees that, if left to
ourselves, we should fall. He is not bound
to show us these favours. They are given to
some, but not to all. And, as we have said
(ch. vi., § 5), it is idle to seek to fathom the
inscrutable mystery of God's dispositions in this
regard. We cannot tell why to some He gives
the efficacious grace which secures their salva-
tion, and permits others to reject His mercy and
perish. We say, and truly, that the issue is
determined by man's free-will ; that those who
perish, perish by their own fault. Yet the fact
remains that God might, had He seen fit, have
given efficacious graces to the reprobate, and
might without injustice have bestowed on the
saved graces from which, to their undoing, they
would have turned away. We do not, and
cannot, know why He shows mercy to these

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 153

rather than to those. So, too, in regard to the
time when death befalls us. The hour of our
death is in God's hands. He has warned us
that it may come at any moment. That it
should come when a man is united to Him by
grace must be esteemed, not a right but a favour,
a favour not bestowed on all. It is manifest
how immense is the boon thus conferred, if we
reflect that God s foreknowledge must in many
a case show that were life prolonged, the soul
would eventually fall into sin and be lost.

The Church assures us that final perseverance
must ever be a gift on God's part : that no
man, however many his good works, can claim
that gift as his strict due. But she teaches
also that it can be obtained with infallible
certainty by prayer. In regard to this, as in
regard to all other things conducing to our
salvation, our Lord's promise holds good.
*' Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in My
name, that will I do : that the Father may be
glorified in the Son " (John xiv. 13). By this,
of course, it is not signified that prayers for
this purpose are sure to obtain their object,
even though we should after a time discontinue
them and neglect the great affair of our
salvation. We must pray for perseverance as
long as our probation lasts : and we must prove

154 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

that we are in earnest by the diligent employ-
ment of those other means of grace which God
has put at our disposal. If we do this, we
need have no fear lest our prayer should remain
unanswered.

4. In what measure can he who is in a state
of grace rid himself, not merely of mortal, but
of venial sins ? This question is nearly con-
nected with that which we have been discussing.
It is true that venial sin does not in itself
involve the forfeiture of grace. But negligence
as regards such sins, if it be habitual and
deliberate, invariably leads to a grave fall. It
is easy to see that this must be so. If a man
freely permits himself to yield to his lower
impulses, provided the matter be not grave,
those impulses will soon acquire a strength
which will inevitably carry him to the com-
mission of a mortal sin in some moment of
stress. Let us suppose, for instance, that a
man harbours a grudge whenever an offence,
however trifling, is done him. Should such a
person meet with anything like a serious wrong,
there is little doubt that his bitter temper will
flare up into a mortal sin of hatred. The
inclination to resentment has been indulged to
such an extent, that it is out of his control.
Besides, all deliberate sin, even though it be

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 155

venial, has a blinding effect on the soul. Those
who commit it quickly cease to realize the
tremendous obligation of God's law. God is
forgotten : and His voice speaking through
conscience is hardly heard. When temptation
assaults them, it finds them unprotected.

Yet no man can altogether rid himself of
venial sin. Scripture assures us in express
terms that no one, however advanced he may
be in the way of sanctity, can attain to perfect
sinlessness in this life. "If we say that we
have no sin," says St. John, ** we deceive our-
selves and the truth is not in us " (1 John i. 8 ) ;
and St. James tells us : ** In many things we
all offend" (Jas. iii. 2). So too our Blessed
Lord has taught all His followers to pray daily :
** Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them
that trespass against us." The words would
have little meaning for the saints if they had
no trespasses which needed forgiveness. The
Church had occasion to define this doctrine as
a matter of faith against its denial by Pelagius.
He claimed that since man possessed free-will,
he could, if he so chose, avoid all sin both
mortal and venial alike. So complete, accord-
ing to him, is man's liberty, that every sin of
whatever kind merits eternal punishment : no
difference can be admitted between mortal and

156 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

venial. The Church utterly repudiated this
appalling rigorism : and defined once and for
all that there is no one even among the
regenerate who can attain to such perfection as
to be altogether free from sin. ^ This inability
to serve God with perfect purity arises, it
would appear, from the present condition of
human nature. The appetites are ever impelling
us to actions which involve some breach of
God's law : and, unless reason be ever on its
guard, we follow where they call. To all men
it happens that from time to time the vigilance
of reason slackens, and some venial sin is the
result. One alone of Adam's race, by a special
and peculiar privilege, lived a life free from the
slightest stain of venial sin : and that was the
ever-blessed Mother of God.*

Yet in asserting cur inability to free ourselves
entirely from the bondage of sin, we must
distinguish between semi-deliberate lapses and
those which are fully deliberate. It is one
thing to be hurried into sin through lack of full
advertence : it is another to offer God the
insult of an open-eyed disobedience, simply
because we know that the matter is light, and
will not involve the loss of sanctifying grace.

' Cone. Milev., II., can. 7, 8 (Denz., 107, 108).
^ Trid. Sess., VI., can. 23 (Denz., 833).

PERSEVERANCE IN GRACE 157

This latter class of sin is incomparably more
blameworthy. And these faults should have
no part in our lives. We are perfectly capable
of eradicating them altogether. Moreover,
even as regards semi-deliberate sins, we can
make constant progress. The diligent practice
of the virtues gives to a man an ever fuller
advertence, and an ever completer control over
his actions. If we will only make this our
object in life, our falls will constantly become
both fewer in number and less and less serious
in their character. *' The path of the just as a
shining light, goeth forwards and increaseth
even to perfect day " (Pro v. iv. 18).

CHAPTEK VIII

GROWTH IN GRACE: (1) MERIT

1. Growth in Grace. 2. Merit : Its Possibility and Con-
ditions. 3. Protestant Objections. 4. Relation of
Charity to Merit. 5. Every Good Work of the Just
Meritorious. 6. Measure of Merit. 7. Merit in
Relation to Perseverance.

1. It is characteristic of man that he should
attain to perfection by degrees : that his
advance from immaturity to maturity should be
gradual. This is true of him in every sphere.
He is born into the world helpless enough. His
various physical powers are present, but as yet
they are latent and undeveloped. Only by
slow stages, and step by step, do they mature.
He must pass from infancy to childhood, from
childhood to adolescence, from adolescence to
manhood, before his capacities find their full
realization.

It is the same in the intellectual and the
moral order as in the physical, save that here
our advance depends far more on our free-will.

1^8

MERIT 159

The principles of mental and moral life are
given us ; but it is only little by little that we
store up knowledge and acquire virtue. And
what is true of the order of nature is no less
true as regards the order of grace. The gift of
justification does not confer perfection. It
gives us spiritual life, but not spiritual maturity.
Our baptism is in truth a new birth. A prin-
ciple of supernatural life is infused into the
soul : the new man comes into existence. But
here too the capacities of the new nature demand
development. During the years which are
given us, our chief object should be that these
capacities should be realized to the full.

Again and again in the New Testament do
the apostles insist on this truth that the
Christian life is a growth — a growth in grace,
in charity, and in the supernatural knowledge
of God. Thus St. Peter exhorts his readers to
"grow in grace and in the knowledge of our
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ " (2 Pet. iii. 18).
St. Paul writes to the Phillppians as follows :
** This I pray that your charity may abound
more and more in knowledge and in all under-
standing " (Phil. i. 9). In another passage,
speaking of the tribulations through which he
was passing, he tells us that in the endurance
of sufiering " the inward man is renewed day

160 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

by day" (2 Cor. iv. 16), And in the epistle to
the Ephesians he assures us that the purpose
of the various graces bestowed upon the faithful
is that we may all come " unto a perfect man,
unto the measure of the age of the fullness of
Christ . . . that doing the truth in charity we
may in all things grow up into Him who is the
head, even Christ " (Eph. iv. 13, 14).

The very nature of grace seems to postulate
the possibility of such growth. As we have
seen, our sonship to God is no mere legal
adoption, regarding which it may be said that
there is no room for more or less : that it is
either bestowed altogether or not at all. By
grace we are made like to God : and it stands
to reason that this likeness can be rendered
more and more perfect in us. No limit can be
assigned as to which we can say that at this
point the grace possible to a mere man is
exhausted. Where measures of space are con-
cerned, every advance made leaves so much less
to be traversed. It is otherwise as regards
knowledge and love. In these our powers
increase in proportion to what we acquire. He
whose knowledge is ample, will add to his store
with a rapidity almost inconceivable to the
man of meagre attainments : and the same holds
good of love, Our advance can be stayed only

MERIT 161

by the close of our probation, or by the ceasing
of our efforts. The purpose for which God
destines His rational creation is the possession
of Himself. When the soul reaches this state,
it has attained the goal to which the whole of
its course was directed. It has reached its
term. It is but to be expected that here the
process of endowment will cease : that the
degree of grace with which it enters on its
possession of God will mark the fixed measure
of glory which it is to inherit : that it has
entered on a definitive state.

That this is in fact so, the Church teaches
us. The whole of Christian tradition assures
us that after death there is no opportunity of
further advance : that the lot of the Blessed is
determined for all eternity at the hour of their
death. It is in this sense that commentators
on Holy Scripture interpret our Lord's words :
"The hour cometh when no man can work**
(John. ix. 4).

It may indeed be urged that for the great
majority of souls the hour of death is not the
time when they reach their last end : that the
debt incurred by past sins must be discharged
in purgatory before they attain to beatitude.
If we are to seek the reason why the soul has
jio power to advance in grace in the fact that

U

162 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

it has reached its term, how comes it, it may be
asked, that the souls in purgatory cannot add
to their store ? To this it may be replied that
these souls, now that death is past, no longer
remain in a state of probation. They have
finished their course : they have kept the faith :
they have made good their title to a heavenly
reward. If they are still detained from the
enjoyment of everlasting felicity, this is not
because for them the battle still continues.
They are subject to a temporary delay due to
the fact that the stains contracted by certain
past sins are as yet unremoved. But their
final lot is fixed: and so soon as the impedi-
ment is done away, they will enter on the
inheritance that is already theirs by right.

2. There are, the Church teaches us, two
ways in which we may increase our grace :
(1) by merit, and (2) by the reception of the
sacraments. We deal here with the doctrine of
merit, reserving the subject of the sacraments
for another chapter.

A work is said to possess merit when it de-
serves a reward. The Church assures us that,
given certain conditions, our good works de-
serve and receive from God a reward of grace
here and glory hereafter. Now it has often
been urged by the adversaries of the Church

MEEIT 163

that such a doctrine involves the idea that we
can stand to God in the relation of creditor to
debtor, that God can be under an obligation to
us. Those who argue thus overlook the fact
that a meritorious work does not always put
the person for whom it is done under an obliga-
tion, but only when it is of such a kind as to
confer some positive advantage upon him. No
one will dispute that when a father rewards a
thoroughly obedient son, the reward is well-
deserved. The father is in no sense a debtor
towards his son : there is no question of strict
obligation. Yet the recompense is given on the
score of merit : for the son by his obedience
has honoured his father. It is utterly impos-
sible that God can be our debtor : our good
works can bring Him no advantage. But they
are none the less done in His honour, and on
this ground they are truly meritorious. To put
this same truth in a different way; in regard
to merit we must distinguish the relation
between the persons concerned on the one hand,
from the relation of the work to its reward on
the other. The work may merit its reward,
even though, as regards the persons concerned,
there is no question of debtor and creditor.
Man owes all he has and all he is to God : and
it is impossible that God should ever be in

164 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

man's debt. But He has ordained that man's
attainment of his last end should depend on
his good works : and, what is more, that there
should be a correspondence between the work
and the reward, that the one should be propor-
tioned to the other* Against the doctrine as
thus stated the objection has no force.

What, then, is required in order that an
action should be meritorious ? On three of the
requisite conditions, viz., that the act must be
morally good, must be free and not necessi-
tated, and must be performed during the space
of man's probation, there is no need to dwell.
But, beyond these, theologians enumerate
three others. The first of these is that a man
must be in a state of grace. No one can merit
a reward which lies wholly outside his sphere.
A private soldier, no matter what his courage,
could not merit the dignity of a minister of the
crown. A servant, whatever might be his zeal
in his master s service, could not claim adoption
to sonship as his due recompense. Only those
who are God's children can merit an increase of
their Divine inheritance. Granted that we are
sons of God, then it follows that our actions
can really deserve glory. For glory is the end
for which as God's children we are destined ;
arid w^ s^v^ to reach that end as the result of

MEEIT 165

our labours. It may, indeed, seem strange to
us that, imperfect as we are, our actions can
really be proportioned to a recompense which
consists in the beatific vision. But the diffi-
culty is removed when we remember that God
reckons the value of actions which proceed
from grace, not in view of the weak human
nature of the agent, but in view of the Divine
principle from which they issue. Secondly,
the action must be done for the service of God.
It is to God that we look for our reward : and
those actions alone constitute a title to reward
from anyone which are done in His service.
Lastly, it must not be forgotten that good
works do not give the doer any claim to a re-
ward apart from God's decree that He will in
fact recompense them. They do not act, so to
speak, automatically. Apart from His promise
to do so, God is not bound to give us anything ;
for we are not free to give or withhold our
service, as we please. We already owe Him all
the actions of our lives. We owe Him our
service, as our Creator, our Preserver, our Re-
deemer. It is simply because He has ordained
that so it shall be, that a reward is due to us.
The doctrine of merit merely maintains that,
granted it be His holy will to recompense us,
then the reward is not out of relation to the

166 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

work done : inasmuch as an act done in grace
is a precious thing not undeserving of a super-
natural reward.

In this connection it may be well to call
attention to a distinction which theologians
draw between ''merit of desert" {meritum de
condigno) and ** merit of congruity " {merituw, de
congruo). An action is said to merit by desert
when the reward is proportionate to the work,
and hence is not more than what justice
prescribes that it should receive. In speaking
of the good works of the just, it is in this sense
that we have been using the term. Granted
that God has promised that our works shall be
rewarded, they possess a merit of desert in the
full sense. Merit is said to be " of congruity,"
when though there is no proportion between the
work and the reward sought, and hence no
question of strict justice, yet the act is such as to
appeal to the generosity of him for whom it is
done and thus gives hope that he will recompense
it. We shall see in the course of this chapter
that there are things which God permits man
to merit after this fashion,* though they are
outside the scope of merit strictly so called.

The passages of Scripture in which the
doctrine of merit is expressly taught are very
numerous. We select a few examples only.

MERIT 167

St. Paul, speaking of our labours in God's
service, says : " Every man shall receive his
own reward according to his own labours "
(1 Cor. iii. 8); and in another place : "What-
soever you do, do it from the heart, as to the
Lord, and not to men : knowing that you
shall receive of the Lord the reward of the
inheritance" (Col. iii. 23, 24). Not less
emphatic are the words of our Lord : *' Behold
I come quickly : and My reward is with Me to
render to every man according to his works "
(Apoc. xxii. 12). It is to be noted that the
words employed in these passages for " reward "
QjiLcrOor), oLVTaTToBoa-iq) are not words of general
significance such as might be equally applicable
if used of a mere gift. They are terms
which distinctly imply a payment for work
done. This aspect of the heavenly recompense
is strongly emphasized in the words in
which St. Paul, speaking of his approaching
death, says that there is laid up for him
a crown which will be conferred on him
by the Lord, *' the just Judge " (2 Tim. iv. 8).
We could hardly look for a more direct state-
ment that good works really merit the glory
which God has promised. The same truth,
too, is implied in those passages in which a
parallel is drawn between the everlasting punish-

168 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

ments of the wicked on the one side and the ever-
lasting reward of the good on the other. In each
case, we are given to understand, God repays in
accordance with the requirements of justice.

If good works give a title to increased glory —
and on this point, as we have seen, there can be
no manner of doubt—it is not less certain that
they merit for us an increase of sanctifying grace.
The one truth follows by necessary consequence
from the other. Glory is the inheritance of the
sons of God. It is due to the just in proportion
as that sonship is realized in them. He who
inherits an ample measure of glory is he who
during the space of his probation has brought
that sonship to a high degree of perfection,
who has in very truth put off the old man, and
put on the new, and has conformed himself to
the image of Christ Jesus. But this is but
another way of saying that he has obtained an
increase of sanctifying grace. It is by grace
that sonship to God is conferred. And it is by
growth in grace and in the virtues that it is
more and more fully realized. The Council of
Trent did but give expression to what is the clear
teaching alike of Holy Scripture and of the
fathers of the Church, when it made this doctrine
a matter of formal definition. Its canon on the
subject runs as follows : " If any man shall say

MERIT 169

. . . that the good works which the justified
man performs through the grace of God and
through the merit of Jesus Christ, in whom he
is a living member, do not in very truth merit
for him an increase of grace, [a title to] eternal
life and, provided only he pass hence in grace,
the actual possession of that life : and, further-
more, an increase of glory — let him be
anathema."^

8. The denial of the doctrine of merit is one
of the cardinal points of Protestantism. To hold
that a man can in any way earn the crown of
glory which he is to receive, is, asserted the
Reformers, to do dishonour to the work of
Christ. It is to His Redemption that we
must owe all, and to maintain that our eternal
happiness will be due to our own personal efforts
is to rob Him of the glory that is His by right.
Indeed, He has expressly assured us that how-
ever exemplary our lives may be, we have not on
that account any claim to a reward. Did He
not say : " When you shall have done all these
things that are commanded you say: We
are unprofitable servants : we have done that
which we ought to do ?" (Luke xvii. 10.) These
words, they contended, put it beyond a doubt
that no labours on our part, however heroic,
1 Trid. Sess. VI., can. 29 (Dena., 842),

170 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

afford the smallest foundation for expecting any
reward at all.

On this point, as on others, the Anglican
divines accept the teaching of the continental
reformers, and repudiate the doctrine of merit
as a " Romish error." So representative a work
as Bishop Harold Browne's Exposition of the
Thirty-Nine Articles speaks as follows : " Even
if we could live wholly without spot, and never
offend in thought, word or deed, even so our
Lord teaches us that such a spotless obedience
would still leave us undeserving of reward. . . .
Even if we could keep all the precepts we should
still be unprofitable, having no right to reward,
but merely to exemption from punishment.
Something more than obedience to precepts is
required, even for salvation" (p. 344).

It is not hard to see how little force there is
in these arguments. The Catholic doctrine, as
we have explained, attributes man's power of
meriting entirely to the redeeming work of
Jesus Christ. It was the sacrifice of Calvary
that earned for us the grace which enables us
to merit at all. We may well ask which
doctrine does most honour to Christ — that
which holds that the results of the Atonement
were so great, that it restored man to the
dignity of a child of God and conferred on him

MERIT 171

the power of winning a crown of glory, or that
which holds that while procuring man's forgive-
ness it was unable thus to elevate his fallen
nature. Indeed it would be impossible to
affirm more explicitly that our power of merit-
ing is due entirely to Jesus Christ, than is done
by the Council of Trent itself. In the very
passage in which it treats of merit, we are
reminded that the works which God rewards
in us are, in fact, gifts bestowed upon us by
Himself After speaking of the increase of
grace and glory to be thus obtained, it proceeds:
" Yet this truth must in no wise be forgotten,
that though so much is attributed to good
works in Holy Writ . . . nevertheless far be
it from any Christian man to trust or to glory
in himself and not in the Lord (1 Cor. i. 31;
2 Cor. X. 17), whose goodness towards all men
is such that He desires that those very things
should be our merits, which are His own gifts
to us."^

It is hardly necessary to point out what fatal
effects the Protestant teaching needs must have
on Christian life and practice. To labour
without regard for the reward belongs to the
highest sanctity alone. The great majority of

1 Trid. Sess. VI., cap. 16 (Denz., 810).

172 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GKACE

men need to be stimulated to virtue by the
knowledge that their labour " is not in vain in
the Lord." Neither in the order of nature nor
in the order of grace do we achieve perfection
at once. If we are told that our labours have
no value, not one man in ten thousand will
make the sacrifices which anything like high
virtue entails. Assuredly this must be
reckoned as being one of the most disastrous
of Luther's errors.

4. It is the teaching of St. Thomas that
charity is the directive principle of every
meritorious act. By this it is not to be under-
stood that the immediate motive of every such
action must be the love of God. Were this so,
our meritorious acts would be few, for it is
plain that only a minority of our virtuous
actions have God as their direct and immediate
object. The greater number must be assigned
to one or another of the various moral or theo-
logical virtues — to justice, temperance, humility,
hope, and so on. We pay our debts because it
is honest to do so ; we govern our temper
because self-control is right and anger wrong ;
we avoid display, because self-advertisement is
incompatible with the humility which we know
to befit us. In all these cases the immediate
motive is the excellence of some virtue which

MEEIT 173

we desire to gain, or the evil of some contrary
vice. But the influence of charity may be real
and effective, even where it is not immediate.
The immediate motive of my act may be the
excellence of a particular virtue ; but my
ultimate purpose in the pursuit of all virtue
may be to please God. Thus I may pardon an
injury because I recognize the nobility of for-
giveness and the hatefulness of the vindictive
spirit ; but I may at the same time realize that
such acts are acceptable to God and may have
the explicit or implicit intention of pleasing
Him by choosing this course. Here, although
charity is not the immediate motive of the act,
it certainly exercises an influence upon our
conduct.

Unless, urges St. Thomas, love exercises such
a directive influence, our act cannot merit any
reward from God. What is not done in His
service cannot possibly have any claim to a
recompense from Him. But unless an act is
referred to Him as the end for whom we exist,
and to whose glory all our actions must tend,
it is not done in His service at all. Only those
acts which in some way issue from love are
thus referred to God : acts on which charity
exerts no influence are done not for God, but
purely and simply to realize some excellence in

174 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

our own souls — in other words, for ourselves.
Even a virtuous act, if it should be done purely
for self, could not claim a reward at God's
hands.

5. It might be imagined that this teaching
confines our meritorious acts to somewhat
narrow limits, and makes it no easy matter to
add t^ our stores of grace. This is, however,
far from being the case, for a little consideration
will show us that charity exercises an influence
on every single good action that we perform in
a state of grace. Provided only that the con-
ditions requisite to make the act a moral act
at all are present — provided, that is, that it
issues from the deliberate choice of the will —
then the act is performed under the influence
of charity. This is true even though at the
moment when we, doing the action, do not
advert to the fact that we are doing it for God.
Charity, as we have explained in a previous
chapter, is the virtue by which we take God
for our last end, and direct ourselves, all we
are and all we do, to God. Without charity,
our ultimate aim would of necessity be our own
advantage. When our last end is determined
by that first of all the virtues, God, not self, is
the object for whom we labour and for whom
we live : and there is no action in life which is

MEEIT 175

not affected by this fundamental change of aim.
This far-reaching effect of the dominating pur-
pose of life may be illustrated from secular
affairs. If, for instance, a man's main ambition
in life is to succeed at the law, this intention
will determine his course in all its details. He
will arrange his studies, his place of residence,
his friendships, with this constantly in view.
His recreations will be such as not to conflict
with his great aim. Whenever he is called on
to make a choice, this ruling purpose comes
into operation ; for what is incompatible with
it must be set aside. We do not say that in
all cases he consciously adverts to it. But it
is ever present as an habitual principle of life ;
and anything that should be seen to conflict
with it would suffice to make it consciously
operative. In the same way those who have
taken God for their last end, if only they are
consistent, test every action by this standard,
80 that there is none in which its influence is
not felt. Few men, it is true, are absolutely
faithful to their temporal aim in all the details
of life. Love of ease or of pleasure leads them
to do many things which are hindrances and
not helps to its attainment. And so it is with
the justified, whose chief purpose is determined
by charity. They are only too often faithless

— '•-/

ST. MICHAEL'
COLLEGi

4^

176 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

in minor matters. Acts of this kind — acts
which in some measure violate God's law,
though they do not involve the forfeiture of
grace — are venial sins. Those men whose every
action is guided by charity, who subordinate
every detail of life to its influence and allow no
alien elements to find an entrance, are the
saints of God.

6. Though all the good works of the just are
meritorious, they are not all so in the same
degree. It needs no argument to show that if
a man forgives a very great wrong, his act is
more deserving of reward than if he barely
succeeded in restraining his temper when under
some slight provocation. The measure of merit
is determined by various conditions. (1) From
what has already been said, it will be seen that
the more intense the charity inspiring the act,
the more it is worth in God's sight. Charity
is the principle by which the action is directed
to God : it tends to God in proportion to the
intensity of the charity exercised in it. If, for
example, we give an alms from the immediate
and conscious motive of the love of God, seeing,
as the saints have been ever wont to do, Christ
in the person of the poor, and making the gift
an offering to Him, the act is thereby rendered
more meritorious than if we performed it out of

MERIT 177

pity, even though that pity were under the
general dominating influence of charity.
(2) Again, merit is increased in proportion to the
strength and promptitude of the act of will.
When we do some good work with our whole
heart, it is more precious than if it were, so to
speak, unwillingly extorted. The man who
serves God with reluctance does not reap so
great a reward as he who serves Him with a
ready will. (3) Lastly, the merit increases
with the difficulty of the act. It is more
meritorious, as we have said, to forgive a
serious wrong than a trifling one : to practise
self-denial in great things than in small. Here,
however, a qualification must be made. The
difficulty of an act, may, it is true, be lessened
by the promptitude of the will. A diminution
arising from this source does not lessen the
merit : contrariwise, it increases it. The
martyrs who went to their deaths with joy
did not forfeit a jot of the merit of their act
because their zeal for God's glory made the loss
of all things seem light to them.

7. However ample may be the store of grace
which a man's good works have won for him,
there is one thing which he can never claim as
being his on these grounds. We mean the gift
of perseverance. Perseverance does not depend

12

178 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

on the amount of grace which we possess.
Were it so, none would ever fall from a life of
sanctity into sin. Yet we know that although
this happens but very rarely, it does from time
to time occur. Men have attained to holiness,
and have afterwards by a lapse into sin flung
away all that they have earned. For no matter
how great the grace which we enjoy, our will
is free. We merit the increase of our super-
natural endowments ; but we do not merit
that we shall put these endowments to good
use. There is but one thing which will secure
this for us : and that is, as we saw in the last
chapter, that in moments of stress, when God
sees that temptation will be too much for us,
He should send us special lights and special
impulses of the Holy Ghost, to bring us safely
through the hour of danger. Sanctifying grace
and the glory consequent upon it fall within
the scope of merit, as being the connatural
result of good works. But there is not any
necessary connection between a good work and
an actual grace given to aid us in the perform-
ance of some other action. These actual graces
stand to good works in the relation of eflScient
principles. They are not, like sanctifying
grace, the fruit of some previous good deed.
Yet though there can be no question of any

MERIT 179

merit of desert in this regard, these graces are
within our reach. They may be obtained by
prayer. It is by prayer that God has appointed
that we should secure our salvation. If our
prayers are humble and constant, God will send
us in the hour of need eflficacious graces — graces
which He foresees will avail to keep us in the
right path.

Hitherto we have been speaking of perse-
verance in general. But what we have said
has its application also to the supreme gift of
final perseverance. Neither of its two elements
can be the fruit of merit. We cannot by good
works ensure that we shall remain faithful for
the future, nor yet that our death shall occur
while we are united to God by charity. In
both regards it is God's gift. But prayer is
the means by which He has ordained that the
gift should be ours. He moves by His grace
the hearts of those whom He " has chosen before
the foundation of the world " to beseech Him
through the merits of His Son to deliver them
from the dangers which encompass them, and ,
to bring them safe to His heavenly kingdom.
And those who thus pray are not disappointed
of their hope. The boon which they ask is
bestowed upon them.

CHAPTER IX

GROWTH IN GRACE: (2) THE SACRAMENTS

1. Increase of Grace ex opere operato. 2. The Holy
Eucharist as the Sacrament of Union. 3. As the
Nourishment of the Soul. 4. Actual Graces of the
Eucharist. 5. Daily Communion. 6. The Sacrament
of Penance.

1. Merit is not the only means by which the
just may grow in grace. Just as it is through
a sacrament that God bestows grace on us in
the first instance, when we are made His chil-
dren in baptism, so too He has provided that
we should add to our store through the sacra-
ments. Five out of the seven sacraments are
** sacraments of the living " — a term denoting
that they are intended for those who already
possess the supernatural life of grace. Only
baptism and penance have as their purpose to
give life to the spiritually dead. It follows
that each of the other five increases the grace
of those who receive it.

Grace given through the sacraments is not

180

THE SACEAMENTS 181

conferred in view of the merits of the recipient,
but in virtue of the sacramental rite duly per-
formed. The rite is administered in Christ's
name. It is His act, executed by a duly
accredited agent on His behalf. Just as in the
days of His mortal life His touch was able to
cure the diseased flesh of the leper, and His
word had power to forgive sins, so to this day
His actions have power to give grace to the
soul ; He still exerts within His Church a heal-
ing virtue, no less wonderful than that which
went out from Him when He sojourned amongst
men.

When grace is given in regard of merit, it is
said to be conferred ex opere operantis; when it
is given through the sacramental rite, it is re-
ceived ex opere O'perato. In either case, it must
be remembered, the ultimate source is always
the Passion of Christ. It is to this and this
alone that man owes all grace. If his actions
can merit such a reward, it is solely because in
virtue of the Passion, he is a member of Christ :
the new nature gives his good works a new
value. The sacraments on the other hand are,
as we have said, Christ's own acts : they are
channels through which He communicates grace
to our souls.

Sacramental grace differs from the grace

182 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

obtained through merit in this important par-
ticular, that in addition to an increase of
sanctifying grace and of the virtues, each
of the sacraments confers certain special aids
corresponding to the purpose for which the
sacrament was instituted. That this is so is
manifest : for each of the sacraments was
designed to produce a particular and definite
result in the Christian life. It follows that each
must carry with it some special gift to bring
about that efiect. In the judgment of most theo-
logians the gift is best explained by supposing
that to every sacrament is attached the right
to actual graces which will assist us in attain-
ing the purpose of the sacrament. Thus
baptism, over and above the habitual grace
which it conveys, gives a title to the actual
graces requisite to live the life of a child of God ;
confirmation acquires for us the aids we need to
profess the faith with courage in the hour of
danger; penance confers light to understand
the malice and deformity of past sin and to
grieve over it ; extreme unction the spiritual
vigour necessary to overcome the torpor of the
soul which illness entails. The sacrament of
holy orders carries with it special assistance
in the celebration of Divine worship ; and
matrimony gives help to bear the trials and to

THE SACRAMENTS 183

fulfil the obligations of conjugal life. Of the
actual graces attached to the Eucharist we
shall speak later in the chapter.

Although grace is conferred in virtue of the
sacrament itself, and not in regard of the
merits of the recipient, it must not be imagined
that the rite operates purely mechanically, so
that no matter whether our dispositions be
good or bad, no matter whether it be applied
with our consent or against it, we receive grace
all the same. In the case of those who have
reached the age of reason the reception of grace
must be voluntary. It would be a useless
thing to baptize an unconscious man at the
point of death, if when conscious he had never
desired baptism. Moreover, there must be
nothing in the soul which is an obstacle to the
entry of sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace
cannot enter, if the will still cleaves to some
grave sin and refuses to renounce it. If a man
should receive a sacrament in such a frame of
mind, not merely does he receive no grace, but
he is guilty of the sin of sacrilege. No one can
become the adopted child of God unless he has
turned away from sin with all his heart, and
sincerely desires to live the life of God's
children. In the case of the sacraments of the
living a yet further condition is required. These

184 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

sacraments are intended for those who are
already in a state of grace. It is not enough
that the recipient should have turned from sin
and should desire forgiveness. None must
approach them if he is conscious that his soul
is still stained by some unforgiven mortal sin.

Few parts of the Church's teaching have been
more misrepresented than the doctrine of the
gift of grace ex opere operato. It is contended
that it attributes a " magical " effect to the
sacramental rites. This objection, which was
first employed by Calvin, would hardly call for
notice, were it not still urged by some prominent
writers.^ The characteristic of magic is that it
is supposed to produce its effects irrespective of
the moral dispositions of those who employ it.
As we have just explained, the Church not
merely aflSrms the need of very definite moral
dispositions in those who receive the sacraments,
but teaches that those who approach them with-
out such dispositions commit a sin of the most
grievous kind. In view of this fact the inanity
of the charge is manifest.

Indeed although in the reception of the
sacraments the cause of grace is the rite and not
our dispositions, the latter play an even more

1 (7/„ e.g., Harnack, Hist, of Dogma (E.T.), viii. 216.

THE SACRAMENTS 185

important part than we have hitherto indicated.
They determine the amount of grace conferred
on us. Just as we saw in the case of the man
who first obtains justification as an adult
(Chapter VI. § 3), so here also the measure in
which grace is bestowed depends on the disposi-
tions of the soul. It is another exemplification of
the principle that the degree in which a perfec-
tion can be realized is conditioned by the capacity
of the subject receiving it. Thus the man who
approaches the sacrament of penance with a pro-
found sorrow for past falls and an ardent desire
for reconciliation with God, will receive a more
abundant benefit than will he whose sorrow,
while genuine as far as it goes, is somewhat
wanting in intensity. In this truth the
Catholic has the strongest possible incentive for
the most devout and careful preparation for
the sacraments which it lies in his power to
give.

Among the sacraments it is the Holy
Eucharist which has been given to us as the
normal source of growth in grace. It alone of
the five sacraments of the living is intended to
be constantly received by the faithful. Through
it they are ever adding to their store of grace.
The other four do not furnish us with a regular
supply of sanctifying grace after this manner.

186 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Confirmation and holy orders are received once
and for all. It is true that, provided we are in
a state of grace, the actual graces attached to
them benefit us very frequently. But it is
only at the time of their reception that they
convey an increment of sanctifying grace. The
case of matrimony and of extreme unction is,
practically speaking, the same. For extreme
unction can only be repeated if danger of
death supervenes once again, and matrimony if
the previous union is dissolved by the death of
one of the parties.

We have, however, another regular source of
grace in the sacrament of penance. This in its
primary purpose is a sacrament of the dead,
intended to restore those who have lapsed
into mortal sin to the inheritance which they
have lost. But the living may also have
recourse to it, and in their case the fruit of the
sacrament is an increase of grace. These two
sacraments, therefore, will engage our atten-
tion in this chapter.

2. The special purpose of the Holy Eucharist
is to unite us to Christ. The very form under
which the sacrament is bestowed proclaims this
to be its object. We partake of the Body and
Blood of the Son of God, that we may become
one with Him. The external sign assures us

THE SACRAMENTS 187

that our incorporation into Him is no mere
metaphor, but an objective truth. On this point
the testimony of Holy Scripture is expUcit. St.
Paul declares that it is through this sacrament
that we enjoy membership in Christ's body.
*' We being many," he says, '* are one bread, one
body : all that partake of one bread " (1 Cor. x. 17).
And our Lord's own words on the subject are
equally plain : " He that eateth My flesh and
drinketh My blood, abideth in Me and I in him "
(John vi. 57).

The union thus effected is spiritual not
physical. The Sacred Humanity of our Lord
comes into contact with our bodies only through
the external species of bread and wine, and when
the species have undergone alteration, it remains
with us no longer. No one has ever taught
that there could be physical union between the
sacred elements and our bodies. Our Lord's
presence with us under the sacramental veils is
the instrument of our healing. But it is upon
the soul that His power goes forth, and so far
as our bodies are benefited, it is through the
soul.

He has not left us in doubt as to the nature
of the gift conferred upon the soul. It is. He
tells us, spiritual life. In the discourse at
Capharnaum in which He spoke of the gift

188 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

He intended to bestow, He said : ''As the living
Father hath sent Me, and I live by the
Father : so he that eateth Me, the same also
shall Hve by Me" (John vi. 58). He is
speaking, it is manifest, of that life which has
been our theme throughout this work, the
life of sanctifying grace. But over and above
grace this sacrament conveys to us in an especial
manner the supreme virtue of charity. It
belongs to charity to unite the soul to God.
Only charity has power to effect that marvellous
union of which we have been speaking, in virtue
of which He abides in us and we in Him. Sanc-
tifying grace makes us His members ; but the
union can only be perfected through charity.

The Holy Eucharist is, further, the sacra-
ment of brotherhood with our fellow members
of the Church. Indeed, this follows as a con-
sequence from its function as the sacrament of
union with Christ. That which joins us to the
head must needs unite us to the members. The
words which we have cited from St. Paul to the
effect that all those who partake of this bread
become one body, enforce each lesson equally.
Moreover, the symbolism of the sacrament is no
less expressive of our union with our fellows
than it is of our incorporation into Christ. For
the Eucharist is a common meal of the children

THE SACRAMENTS 189

of God. We approach the altar as the table of
our Heavenly Father. There earthly distinctions
of nationality, of race, of class, no longer exist.
We kneel before it as brothers, children of one
mother, the Catholic Church, whom she has
brought forth for God. There we are fed on
heavenly food, which proclaims us as forming one
family with all the just : not merely with the
just of the Church militant, but with the holy
souls in purgatory, and with the blessed spirits,
whether angelic or human, who stand before the
throne of God and see Him face to face.

From the earliest age of the Church, her
writers have loved to trace in this sacrament
the symbol of unity. They draw a comparison
between the many grains of corn which have
gone to the making of the bread or the numerous
grapes which have yielded their juice for the
wine on the one hand, and the Catholic Church
formed out of many individuals drawn from the
most diverse races on the other. This idea is
developed by various authors. It is found in
the early writing entitled The Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles,^ which is by many held to date
from the first century and to be contemporary
with the apostles themselves. In the third

^ Didachi.f o. ix., n. 4.

190 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

century it is employed by St. Cyprian/ and at
a later date by St. Augustine.^

In this fruit of the sacrament we have a strong
confirmation of what was said above as to its
immediate effect being not merely to add to our
grace but also to increase within us the virtue
of charity. We noted when treating of that
virtue in Chapter IV. that the charity by which
we love God is the same as that by which we
love man for God's sake. God is the primary
object of the virtue : man, the secondary object.
Hence the sacrament which unites our souls to
God will also bind us to our fellows, and more
especially to those who share with us in the high
privilege of the Divine adoption.

3. If the Eucharist is viewed under its other
main aspect, viz., as the supernatural nourish-
ment of the soul, it appears no less clearly that
its special work is to communicate to us those two
greatest gifts, sanctifying grace and charity.
Our Lord Himself taught us to regard it in this
light, when He pointed to the manna in the
wilderness as a type of this sacrament. As the
manna was the support of the Israelites in their
pilgrimage through the desert, so the children of

1 Ep. 63, n. 13 (P.L., iv. 384).

2 Tract, in Joan., Tr. xxvi. 17 (P.L. xxxv. 1614); Serm,
ccvii. (P.L. xxxviii. 1100) ; Serm. ccix. (P.L. xxxviii. 1103).

THE SACRAMENTS 191

the New Covenant are to find support in a yet
more miraculous food, as they journey through
life towards their heavenly home. Yet there is
one essential difference between the nourishment
of our bodies by material food and the nourish-
ment of the soul by the Blessed Sacrament.
Material food is transformed into our substance.
Our vital forces assimilate what is placed within
their reach, and by the wonderful chemistry of
the human frame, what was once the substance of
some plant or some animal is transmuted into
human flesh. It is otherwise as regards the
spiritual food bestowed upon us in the Eucharist.
We are changed into it, not it into us. By par-
taking of it we receive the nature of Christ.
This truth is taught by St. Augustine in a
beautiful passage, of his Confessions : *' I found
myself," he writes ''to be far off from Thee in the
region of unlikeliness, as if I had heard Thy voice
from on high : * I am the food of grown men :
grow, and thou shalt feed upon Me : nor shalt
thou convert Me like the food of thy flesh, but
thou shalt be converted into Me.* " ^ St. Leo the
Great gives expression to the same thought :
" The participation of the Body and Blood of
Christ works in us no less an effect than this,

^ Confessions f VII., x 16, translated by E. B. Pusey
(1838).

192 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

that we are transformed into that which we
receive, and that both in spirit and in flesh
we bear the likeness of Him in whom we
have died, have been buried and have risen. "^
At a later date Urban IV. (1261 - 1264),
the Pope who instituted the festival of
Corpus Christi, reiterates the same teaching
in the Bull which he issued for that purpose :
" This bread," he says, " is eaten but not
assimilated, swallowed but not transmuted ;
it is in no wise changed into the consumer,
but if it be worthily received the consumer
becomes like it. "^

Apart from this one vital difference, the
effects of this heavenly food upon our souls are
analogous to those which earthly food has upon
our bodies. St. Thomas sums up these under
four heads. Food, he says, sustains the body,
increases it, repairs it, and is a delight to it : and
all this does the Eucharist do for the soul. The
Church has set her seal upon this teaching ; for
two hundred years later she embodied St.
Thomas's words in one of the decrees of the
Council of Florence (1439).^ A brief con-
sideration of the four points mentioned will

1 Serm. Ixiii. 7 (P.L., liv. 357).

* Mansi, Coll. Ampl. Cone., xxiii. 1078.

• Dear, ^ro Armenis (Denz., 698).

THE SACEAMENTS 193

show how they are verified in the spiritual
order.

The body must be sustained by food or death
will ensue, for the principle of life is not
indefectible. So is it with the soul. The
principle of spiritual life is the grace we derive
from Christ. We must take heed that we
remain united to Him, for if we sever ourselves
from Him, we shall perish like branches broken
off from the stem. It is the Holy Eucharist
which maintains this union. It ensures a
copious outflow of grace from Him to us ; and
thus it saves us from succumbing to the tempta-
tions which Satan lays in our path. More than
this : when the body has proper sustenance, it
acts with vigour and alacrity ; it does not suffer
from languor and lassitude. This too is true
as regards the soul. Fortified with heavenly
food we are prompt to perform acts of virtue ;
we do not faint or fail under the difficulties of
our pilgrimage, but go forward rapidly on the
path that leads to glory.

Food gives increased growth to the body,
building it up from the immaturity of infancy to
fully developed manhood. The Eucharist gives
the like benefit to the soul. Through the Body
and Blood of Christ grace and the virtues attain
a fuller development within us ; we advance to an

1.3

194 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

ever higher perfection. In one circumstance
alone does the comparison here fail us. In the
body there is a point beyond which no develop-
ment can be looked for. The growth of grace
and of the supernatural virtues only ceases when
life itself is at an end.

The body, like all things in constant use, is
ever suffering dilapidation. From time to time
it receives some wound or injury ; and even
though no positive injury befall it, there
is much wear and tear. Food provides the
means of repair. If the body be nourished with
wholesome food, wastage is made good and
wounds heal. The soul suffers loss through sin :
for there is no one who does not at least
fall into many semi-deliberate venial sins, which
lessen our fervour and dispose us for more
serious lapses. The Holy Eucharist repairs the
loss. The charity which it confers upon us
issues in acts of love towards God. These
restore the fervour which our falls have
weakened, and little by little tend to heal the
dispositions from which these falls spring.

Lastly, the Eucharist resembles good food in
this, that it causes joy and delight. A healthy
man experiences a sense of physical delight, when
he satisfies hunger with good and sufficient food.
In like mauner tbe Iqvb which springs up in the

THE SACKAMENTS 195

soul through the reception of Holy Communion
is a source of joy and delight of a higher order.
There is no joy greater than the joy of love ; and
the love of God is the deepest and purest which
the heart can know. It is not without reason
that Holy Scripture speaks of this inestimable
gift as -' bread having in it all that is delicious,
and the sweetness of every taste " (Wisd.
xvi. 20\ and as " wine to cheer the heart of
man" (Ps. ciii. 15).

4. We have stated earlier in this chapter
that the various sacraments carry with them
not merely sanctifying grace, but actual graces
corresponding to their respective purposes.
The Eucharist is no exception. Over and
above the habitual grace and charity which it
confers, it stimulates the soul to acts of charity.
Its reception arouses actual fervour — a tender-
ness of devotion quite distinct from the mere
habit of the virtue. That this is so is
sufficiently proved by the passages of Scripture
in which it is spoken of as productive of
spiritual joy. Such joy can only arise from the
actual exercise of love, not from its habitual
possession.

In virtue of these actual graces the Holy
Eucharist produces as a secondary effect the
forgiveness of venial aio, Venial sin, as^ w§

196 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

have noted, quenches fervour and devotion in
the soul ; moreover, it entails a debt of temporal
punishment to be discharged in purgatory.
The acts of love consequent on the reception of
Holy Communion remedy both of these evils.
Not merely do they rekindle our flagging
devotion, but they possess a satisfactory value
as regards punishment. As long as we live
here, our good works are one and all satisfactory
as well as meritorious, and the degree of
satisfaction which they contain is proportionate
to the charity which inspires them. Satisfac-
tion is nothing else than the reparation which
we make to God's honour, and the greater
the influx of charity in the action, the greater
is the honour shown to God by it. Hence
these acts of love, by reason of their fervour, go
far to blot out the debt of punishment due to
us. It is hardly necessary to say that we are
not here speaking of venial sins to which the
soul still fosters an attachment. No sin, be it
venial or mortal, can find forgiveness unless the
soul has turned away from it. And there can
be no remission of the punishment till the guilt
of the sin has been removed.

5. The Church desires that all her children
should partake of the Holy Eucharist with
great frecjuency : that thus they may be united

THE SACRAMENTS 197

more and more closely to Christ, and that grace
and the virtues may develop within them. It
is evident that the more often they have
recourse to this heavenly food, the more rapid
will their spiritual growth be. A great step in
this direction was taken when Pope Pius X.
published his famous decree on the practice of
daily Communion. In this the faithful are
reminded that our Lord^s intention was that
His followers should communicate daily, and
this, we are assured, is implied in His com-
parison of the Holy Eucharist with bread and
with manna ; for bread is the daily food of the
body, and the Israelites received the gift of
manna day by day. Moreover, it is of the
Eucharist that the fathers of the Church
interpret the petition : " Give us this day our
daily bread." As to the purpose of this sacra-
ment, the Pope warns us against supposing
that it was intended to be a reward for virtue
already attained. On the contrary, it is directed
*' chiefly to this end, that the faithful being
united to God by means of this sacrament, may
thence derive strength to resist their sensual
passions, and to cleanse themselves from the
stains of daily faults, and to avoid those graver
sins to which human frailty is liable."

One of the main objects of the decree was to

198 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

correct a somewhat prevalent error to the effect
that a somewhat advanced degree of sanctity
is required to justify anyone in receiving the
Blessed Sacrament daily. It teaches definitely
that the dispositions requisite for daily Com-
munion are absolutely identical with those
which are necessary for weekly or monthly
reception, while the good results to be looked
for in the former case will be far more abundant.
What these dispositions are it declares with no
uncertain voice : "Although it is most expedient
that those who communicate frequently or daily
should be free from venial sin, especially from
such as are fully deliberate, and from any
affection thereto, nevertheless it is sufficient
that they be free from mortal sin, with the
purpose of never sinning in the future ; and if
they have this sincere purpose, it is impossible
but that daily communicants should gradually
emancipate themselves from venial sins, even
from all affection thereto."

The decree has undoubtedly borne much fruit.
None can be blind to the fact that wherever
the practice of daily Communion has been
adopted, the spiritual results have been little
less than extraordinary ; though, indeed, they
have not been greater than what might have been
expected to follow from the streams of sancti-

THE SACRAMENTS 199

fying grace thus communicated to the faithful.
Yet much still remains to be done, for those
who approach the altar daily are still few in
comparison with the full number of those in
whose power it lies to avail themselves of this
great privilege. It may well excite our surprise
that any can be indifferent to the riches thus
placed within their reach. Assuredly, were it
not for our spiritual blindness, no Catholic who
could thus daily partake of the Bread of Life
would fail to do so.

6. The other sacrament which calls for our
attention in this connection is that of penance.
The primary purpose of penance is not to
furnish fresh grace to those who are spiritually
living, but to restore those who have lapsed to
the sonship which they have lost. The super-
natural sign is that of a judicial process. We
rightly speak of the " tribunal " of penance.
In every duly organized State there are
tribunals to take cognizance of grave violations
of the law. The Church, Christ's kingdom, is
no exception. He has set up the tribunal of
penance for this end. But there is a wide
difference between it and the tribunals of
secular States. They deal with crimes as they
affect social order, and their object, in conse-
quence, is to vindicate the law by the infliction

200 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

of punishment. Penance deals with man's
falls, not as affecting external order, but in
view of the breach they have made between
the soul and God. Hence its chief object is
not to punish, but to reconcile. The only way
in which reconciliation is possible for the man
who has fallen into grave sin, is that he should
repent of his fall and receive again at God s
hands the gift of sanctifying grace. Only
when grace is once more infused into his soul
does he again become a child of God. The
sacrament of penance was instituted for this
end. It is the means provided by our Lord
that the sinner may recover the grace he has
forfeited.

Yet though penance is primarily intended
for the forgiveness of mortal sin, venial sins are
not excluded from its scope. All breaches of
God's law may be submitted to it. Those who
are already in grace may avail themselves of it
for their daily faults. Thus it comes about
that in this sacrament of the dead we have yet
another means besides the Holy Eucharist
through which we may be ever adding to our
stores of grace. The measure of the gift
bestowed will depend, as we have seen, on the
dispositions with which we approach the sacra-
ment. Here the dispositions requisite are

THE SACRAMENTS 201

sorrow for the faults we confess and a purpose
that by God s help we will avoid them for the
future. In proportion to the reality and the
intensity of our sorrow and our purpose of
amendment will be the measure of grace which
the sacrament conveys to our soul.

CHAPTER X

THE LOSS AND RECOVERY OF GRACE

1. Mortal Sin and its Effects. 2. Restoration possible for
All. 3. Contrition and Attrition. 4. The Debt of
Temporal Punishment. 5. Recovery of Merits.
6. Effects of Venial Sin.

1. There is but one thing which can drive
sanctifying grace from the soul, viz., mortal sin.
Indeed, it is so called for no other reason than
that it has this power of destroying our super-
natural life. Every mortal sin, of whatever
kind, produces this result. A fully deliberate
violation of God's law in a grave matter involves
the rejection of God as our last end. It is an
act of formal rebellion against His authority.
By such an act, it is plain, the sinner of
necessity forfeits the virtue of charity. Those
who possess charity love God above all things :
that is, they direct their lives to Him as their
last end. When a man shakes off the yoke of

God's authority, he thereby makes self-grati-

202

LOSS AND EECOVERY 203

fication his end instead of God, and in so doing
deprives himself of charity. The loss of charity
involves the loss of grace. We cannot keep the
one without the other. We cannot reject God as
our end, and yet remain His adopted children.
On the other hand, there are less grievous sins
which do not involve the rejection of God's
service. They are, it may be, only half-
deliberate, or the matter of the sin is trifling.
The note of full and formal rebellion is lacking to
them. They do not expel charity, and are
compatible with the presence of grace. These
are termed venial sins.

It is unnecessary to dwell in any great detail
on all that is implied by the death of the soul.
Besides grace and charity, we lose the infused
moral virtues and the seven gifts of the Holy
Ghost. We become incapable of meriting by
good works. We forfeit the merits we have
already accumulated. The works by which we
gained them cannot exercise their due effect
so long as the obstacle of mortal sin bars the
way, any more than the sun's rays can find
their way to us if their passage is barred by an
opaque body. More dreadful than all, we lie
under sentence of damnation ; nor can we
escape that fate, unless God pardons our sin and
restores grace to our soul. Two supernatural

204 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

habits, indeed, God in His mercy permits us to
retain — the virtues of faith and hope. These
are only expelled by the sins directly contrary
to them, viz., infidelity and despair.

As regards man's relation to God mortal sin
places him in the state of guilt. A soul is said
to be in this state if God still reckons to its
charge the moral evil by which it offended Him.
So long as this accountability rests upon the
sinner, guilt cleaves to him ; the offence remains.
It is plain that there can be no removal of guilt
till he shall have retracted his act and en-
deavoured in some way to make amends for it.
Since the soul in this condition remains turned
away from God guilt is often described simply
as the state of aversion from God as our last
end. So, too, the remission of guilt may be
viewed either as the cancelling of the imputation
of sin, or as the conversion of the soul anew to
its last end. The restoration to the state of
grace has both these results. Where grace and
charity are, there the soul is united to God :
nor is there any further question of the imputa-
tion of sin. Nothing but the infusion of grace
can remove guilt. For God has so ordered that
a man must either be in a state of grace or in
mortal sin. His soul cannot be united to God
while still remaining in the natural order. He

LOSS AND RECOVERY 205

must attain God as his supernatural end or not
at all. There is no middle course save for those
infants who die unbaptized, but before they
are capable of grave sin.

2. The Church is emphatic in declaring that no
fall, however great, is such as to render a return
to grace impossible. In this she does but teach
what is contained in numerous passages of
Scripture. Thus St. Peter writes: ''The Lord
. . . dealeth patiently for your sake, not willing
that any should perish, but that all should return
to penance" (2. Pet. iii. 9). Nowhere, indeed, is
this consoling truth more forcibly expressed than
in the parable of the Prodigal Son. In that
character we have represented to us the sinner
who has cast aside his sonship to God, and by
his own act has put a great distance between
himself and God's love. Yet no sooner does he
seek to be reconciled to his Father than the robe
of grace is restored to him, and he is made a
partaker in the heavenly banquet which is the
prerogative of God's children.

Repentance is God's gift. The sinner
deprived of sanctifying grace cannot by his
natural powers take a single step towards the
attainment of the beatific vision. For this
he needs the assistance of actual grace. But
this assistance is never denied him. And

206 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

it is in order that the path of return may
be easy for him that, when grace is lost, God
permits faith and hope still to remain in the soul.
The sinner still believes what the Church
teaches, and still hopes for heaven and fears hell.
With greater or less frequency these motives
present themselves to his mind, and solicit him
to repent of his sin. If he should still cleave to
evil, it can only be because he wilfully shuts
his ears to the repeated calls of God's love.

For those who by heresy or unbelief have for-
feited the gift of faith, repentance is far harder.
Till faith is recovered a return to God is impos-
sible. And experience shows that the recovery
of faith demands graces of no ordinary kind. Yet
even in regard to those who have flung away this
precious gift, the Church assures us that they
are not left destitute of God's help. They are,
at least, moved from time to time to pray ; and if
they will but put this grace to good use, all that
they have lost will be restored to them. Their
minds will be enlightened once again to recognize
the truth, their hearts moved to acts of sincere
sorrow, and the sacrament of penance will
reconcile them to God.

There is indeed one class of sinners whose
case presents special difficulty. If a man should
persevere for a long time in the commission of
grievous sin, not falling through human frailty,

LOSS AND EECOVERY 207

but doing wrong of deliberate and set purpose,
he becomes obdurate in evil. The mind becomes
blinded, and the will hardened. He seems incap-
able of compunction or even of any realization of
spiritual truth. From such God seems to have
turned away His face. Yet even in such cases we
must not suppose that the soul is so rejected by
God as not to receive any assistance. He does
not deprive these men of His ordinary graces ;
and these, if they would only use them, are
sufficient. But He does not work a miracle on
their behalf; He does not bestow those special
and extraordinary graces which alone would
bring them to repentance.

3. Our repentance is of different degrees
of perfection according to the motives from
which it springs. If our sorrow for past sins
arises from our having offended One who is
infinitely worthy of our love, and whom we
love above all things, it springs from the highest
of all motives. No motive can be nobler than
the love of God for His own sake. But there
may be a perfectly sincere and genuine sorrow
due to less exalted reasons. We may be moved
to repentance by the desire to attain to
that heavenly beatitude, of which sin will
assuredly deprive us ; or our motive may be the
fear of the torments of the damned, which will be
pur portiott if we do not repent. Om reason.

208 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

undoubtedly, why the doctrine of hell has been
revealed to us, is that it may thus stimulate men
to repentance.

The highest kind of sorrow is termed perfect
contrition, or more usually simply Contrition,
If based on any other motive but the highest, it
is called imperfect contrition or Attrition.
These two differ in a most important particular
as regards their effects. An act of contrition
avails to restore us forthwith to grace, even
before we have approached the sacrament of
penance and received the grace of absolution.
It does not excuse us from the obligation
of confessing the grave sins of which we may
have been guilty. To neglect this duty would
be to forfeit the grace we have recovered.
But it restores grace then and there. Our Lord
assures us that the Divine indwelling is the
immediate consequence of the love of God
on our part (John xiv. 23). And this Divine
indwelling is, we know, only possible if the soul
is adorned with sanctifying grace. The same
truth is contained in St. John's words : " Dearly
beloved, let us love one another : for charity is
of God and every one that loveth is born of God "
(1 John iv. 7). If the love of our neighbour for
God's sake is a proof that we are **born of
God," it is evident that the love of God

LOSS AND EECOVERY 209

Himself necessarily carries with it the gift of
grace.

Attrition does not immediately restore us to
the status of children of God. But it enables
us to recover sanctifying grace in the sacrament
of penance. It has this effect because it removes
all obstacles to the presence of grace. The
sinner who has attrition, has a genuine detesta-
tion for his past sins and a firm purpose of
serving God in the future. He has not, indeed*
as yet risen to the performance of man's highest
duty, the love of God; but the intention to
perform it is included in his purpose of keeping
all God's commands ; and so soon as grace is
given him, he will perform it. It is most
important to note that the motive of fear
may have this result. The sinner fears hell, and
his fear of hell leads him to hate and detest the
sins which threaten to drag him thither. From
the time of Luther to the present day Protestants
have contended that the Catholic doctrine of
attrition is altogether immoral : that according •
to it a man may be forgiven if he simply
desists from sin out of terror, even though his
heart retains all its old attachment to sin :
that it is a sorrow which involves no change
of heart whatever. The objection is a mere
travesty of Catholic doctrine. No Catholic

14

210 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

theologian has ever maintained such an opinion
or anything like it. They have one and all
taught that there is no forgiveness unless there
is a genuine detestation for sins, and a total
renunciation of all attachment to them.
This has been pointed out by every Catholic
writer on the subject for the last three hundred
years. The objection, however, is still urged as
though no answer had ever been given.

The Protestant teaching, which makes perfect
contrition a necessary condition of all forgive-
ness, can only be productive of harm. As we
have already pointed out, men do not as a rule
rise to the higher degrees of virtue all at once :
their advance is gradual, one step at a time.
The man who has habituated himself to sin
must be influenced by the fear of God's judg-
ments before his heart can be touched to love
God. The state of sin is sickness of the soul,
and the vitiated spiritual taste can no longer
relish the sweetness of God. The motive of fear
is the remedy appropriate to such a condition.
The ascent of a ladder is not rendered easier by
the cutting away of all the lower rungs.

4. We have yet to speak of the debt
of temporal punishment incurred by sin.
Forgiveness of guilt does not carry with it the
remission of all punishment. Sin is, in fact,

i

LOSS AND RECOVERY 211

more than a breach of friendship with God. It
deprives God of the honour which is due to Him
from man, and is thus a violation of justice.
Every sin contains an oifence against both these
duties. By forgiveness God restores us to
His friendship ; but His wisdom decrees that we
should discharge the debt due to justice. An
illustration from earthly affairs may help us
here. If a friend should wilfully trample on my
flower-beds, and destroy my cherished plants,
even though on his asking my pardon, I should
freely forgive the wrong done to our friendship,
I might still judge it best for his own sake not
to forgo such compensation as he could give.
Nevertheless, so far as mortal sin is concerned,
it is plain that the whole character of punish-
ment is altered when the guilt of the sin
is forgiven. Till this takes place, the sinner is
under sentence of damnation. So soon as he is
reconciled to God, the penalty due is not the
eternal pain of hell, but a measure of temporal
pain to be endured in the cleansing fires of
purgatory. The chastisement may be longer or
shorter, more or less severe, but it is a chastise-
ment inflicted in all love by a father on a son,
not a penalty imposed on a rebellious criminal by
a judge.

In regard to this subject theologians raise a

212 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

further question. If every mortal sin merits
eternal punishment, what is it that determines
the temporal punishment assigned to forgiven
mortal sin ? It is not easy to see how a merely
temporal chastisement can bear any proportion
to a guilt which is such as to have deserved an
eternal penalty. Yet surely there is a proportion
between the two. It is difficult to imagine that
the measure of purgatorial pain is fixed solely by
God's decree, and that there is not an intrinsic
connection between the sin and its punish-
ment.

On this point there is some difference of
opinion among the theologians. It will be
sufficient for us here to give the solution offered
by St. Thomas. Mortal sin, he reminds us,
may be viewed under two aspects. In every
such sin there is, on the part of the soul, a
turning towards creatures in something that is
forbidden, and in consequence of this, a turning
away from God, our last end. It is under the
latter aspect that sin entails the debt of eternal
punishment. The choice of a last end is, by its
very nature, a choice determining the status of
the soul ; and if death should occur while the
soul is thus separated from God, there is no
possibility of recovery. It has chosen its lot,
and must remain for ever excluded from all

LOSS AND EECOVERY 213

hope of beatitude. This turning away from
God is always due to undue love for some
created good. The soul could not desire
separation from God for its own sake. It
accepts that separation sooner than forgo the
good for which it craves. Unlawful love for
the creature does not, apart from the consequent
rejection of God, merit the dreadful sentence of
eternal damnation ; but it deserves some penalty
on its own account. Thus, in hell, sins will not
all be punished alike ; but over and above the
privation of God and the pains annexed to this,
they will be visited with various penalties
corresponding to their individual character.
Now, if a soul recovers sanctifying grace, and
is once more united with God as its last end,
the debt of eternal punishment is at once
cancelled : there is no longer any sentence of
exclusion to bar its entrance into heaven. But
the debt contracted by turning to creatures is
unaffected, and must be paid either in this life
or in purgatory. In this life, we are able to
make satisfaction for it, not merely by self-
imposed penance and acts of mortification, but
by the patient endurance of trials and sorrows
in conformity with God's will. Happy are
those who thus discharge their debt, and do not
leave it to be paid beyond the grave. For so

214 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

long as we live here, our actions are not merely
satisfactory, but meritorious as well. The trials
we endure, the mortifications we practise, win
for us a fuller measure of sanctifying grace, and
a higher place in heaven. It may at first sight,
perhaps, appear that since our trials are not
self-chosen, but imposed upon us by God, our
endurance of them is involuntary, and can lay
no claim to a reward. Yet this is not so. In
so far as we submit our will to God's will in this
regard, they become, in a real sense, an offering
made by us to Him. We accept them by an
act of free will, and God reckons them to us as
voluntary actions. In purgatory, the hour for
merit has gone by. There the soul undergoes
purification. But no matter how prolonged
its sufferings may be, it can gain no increment
of grace. The measure of grace which it pos-
sessed when life's journey ended determines its
place in heaven.

5. When a soul returns to grace after a fall,
the obstacle which deprived its good works of this
claim to a reward is done away. Considered in
themselves, they were acts acceptable to God ;
and they did not cease to be so because the
soul fell into sin. But so long as the state of
sin endures, no reward can come to a soul. Let
that state only be done away, and they are

LOSS AND EECOVERY 215

once more reckoned to its account. So far, all
theologians are agreed. But as to the way in
which this doctrine of the recovery of merits
should be interpreted, there is not the same
unanimity. St. Thomas, in his treatment of
the point, tells us that we must not suppose
that the soul necessarily recovers the same
quantity of grace as it forfeited, and con-
sequently becomes entitled to the same
reward of glory. The gift of grace is always
proportionate to the dispositions of the soul.
The principle that the degree in which any
perfection is received is determined by the
aptitude of the recipient, is of general
application. We have already seen that it
applies to the gift of grace, as bestowed upon
an adult attaining to justification for the first
time (Chap. VI., § 3). It is no less applicable
to the return to grace after a lapse. If the
sinner returns with intense contrition for his
sin, and fervent love to God, whom he has
offended, it may well be that he rises from sin
with a measure of grace fuller than that from
which he fell. If his sorrow, though genuine
as far as it goes, is devoid of fervour, he will
find himself poorer than he was. Ordinarily
speaking, a man's sorrow will depend on what
his past life has been. The man who in the

216 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

main has striven to serve God, will generally
return with deep sorrow, while the contrition
of the half-hearted Christian will be but
languid. But though the grace thus recovered
depends, so far as its quantity is concerned, on
the dispositions of the repentant sinner, it will
not be given him in regard of his act of
contrition alone. His title to this grace consists
of all his past good works, and his heavenly
crown will be given him as the reward which
they have earned.

It has often been contended that this view
renders the recovery of merits purely nominal,
and deprives it of all substantial reality. The
force of the objection may best be seen by an
example. Let us take a case in which two men
both rise from a state of sin by an act of
contrition of the same degree of fervour. One
of these, it may be supposed, had, previous to
his fall, acquired many merits ; the other, none
at all. According to the view we have just
explained, these two men would possess the
same degree of grace, and consequently would
receive the same measure of the beatific vision
in heaven. It is urged that if this be so, the
man who previously lived well, and stored up
many merits, might just as well never have
done so : he is not a whit better oif than the

LOSS AND RECOVERY 217

man who has Hved in sin all his life. Such an
explanation, it is asserted, evacuates the
doctrine of all its meaning.

It cannot be denied that the objection, at
first sight, is forcible. But it owes its plausibil-
ity to the failure to realize that an altogether
special dignity attaches to the heavenly reward,
by reason of the good works for which it is the
recompense. Hence, in the case supposed, even
though the absolute quantity of glory is the
same for each, the reward of the man who has
done many meritorious actions will be of a
different order from that of him whose sole title
to heaven was his one act of contrition. God
might have so disposed things that both angels
and men should receive eternal beatitude,
without having to struggle for it and earn it
by their good works. Yet in order that they
may possess it as a reward which they have
won, and not merely as a gift on His part, He
allows them to do battle with temptation
throughout life, and to run all the risks of final
failure and eternal loss, which that struggle
carries with it. He has even judged it best to
permit that many souls should fall away and
perish, rather than that those which are saved
should not have won their crown by their
merits. It is, then, no light thing that the

218 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

good works of a soul should be in God's
remembrance for all eternity as that soul's title
to glory, even though the actual measure of the
beatific vision which it enjoys be no greater
than that which belongs to some soul which
has entered heaven on the title of one act
of intense contrition. Viewed in this light, it
will be readily seen that the interpretation
given by St. Thomas to the doctrine of the
recovery of merits does not deprive it, as is
alleged, of all value, and leave it a recovery in
name alone. It is, further, to be noted that we
have been speaking only of that heavenly
reward which consists in the beatific vision. It
is this which is determined by the grace which
we possess. We shall see, in the last chapter of
this work, that, besides the supreme reward of
the beatific vision, the Blessed also enjoy
certain subsidiary, or, as they are termed,
accidental rewards; and that, so far as these
are concerned, every good action will have its
own special recompense. The opponents of St.
Thomas's teaching ordinarily leave this con-
sideration out of account.

It must not be thought, because the sinner
recovers his merits when he returns to grace,
that it follows as a consequence that, should he
relapse again into sin, the guilt of former sins

LOSS AND RECOVERY 219

will forthwith be imputed to him. The two
cases are not really parallel. The merit of good
works is never abolished : it is merely hindered
from exercising its effect, because their doer is
in a state of sin. As regards the forgiveness of
sin, it is otherwise. The guilt of the sin is not
suspended : it is done away. Hence a new fall
from grace cannot restore it. Indeed, the ex-
pressions employed in Holy Scripture regarding
the forgiveness of sins are such as to preclude all
idea of any reviviscence of guilt. Such, for
example, are the words of Micheas : " He will
put away our iniquities, and He will cast all
our sins into the bottom of the sea" (viii. 19) ;
and those of Isaias : *' If your sins be as scarlet,
they shall be made white as snow : and if they
be red as crimson, they shall be white as wool "
(i. 18). It should, however, be borne in mind
that the malice of a sin is much increased when
it is a relapse after forgiveness. It acquires a
special character of ingratitude ; and, ordinarily,
it involves the rejection of much clearer light.
Hence the punishment which it will incur may
be immensely greater. It is thus that we
should understand the parable of the unmerciful
servant. Here it is the fact that he has
himself just been forgiven which renders his
conduct towards his fellow-servant so abomin-

220 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

able a crime. When we are told that " his Lord,
being angry, delivered him to the torturers, till
he should pay all the debt " (Matt, xviii. 34),
we are not to understand that his former guilt
revived, but that his sin of cruelty and
ingratitude was, in itself, such as to merit this
tremendous penalty.

6. Something must be said, in conclusion, as
to the effects of venial sin. By venial sin we
do not reject God as our last end. Hence, it
does not carry with it the forfeiture of charity
and grace. These remain in the soul, even
though the sinner does not avail himself of
them. Even the greatest saints, our Lady
alone excepted, have fallen into venial sins.
Yet they did not thereby forfeit the gift of
sanctifying grace. The more numerous our
venial sins, the heavier is our debt of purgator-
ial suffering. But venial sins can never deserve
the penalty of eternal damnation.

Not merely do venial sins not destroy
sanctifying grace ; they do not diminish it. If
they did so, a time would come when, through
venial sins alone, a man would fall from grace,
and find himself in a state of sin. But such
sins can never have this result. To fall into a
state of sin, a man must positively turn away
from God in such a way as to place his last end

LOSS AND RECOVERY 221

elsewhere. In venial sin, there is no such
turning away.

Nevertheless, if we do not keep up a constant
warfare against venial sin, we are in grave
peril of losing grace. Venial sins, above all if
they are deliberately committed, habituate the
soul to yield to temptation. The power of
inclination grows stronger, and the control of
reason weaker : the judgment is obscured, and
the vigour of the will relaxed. Where this is
the case, it is morally certain that, should a
grave temptation suddenly present itself, a man
will fall. Indeed, it is in this way that the fall
of those who have lived pious lives ordinarily
occurs. Nemo repentefit turpissimus. Men do
not rush headlong from piety to mortal sin :
there is an intervening stage of carelessness in
regard to venial sins. A man, for instance, will
allow himself to harbour a resentful spirit,
saying to himself that, after all, there is no
mortal sin in being surly. One day he receives
a serious wrong ; the passion of anger blazes up
in his heart, and he falls into a mortal sin of
hatred. Hence spiritual writers, with one
consent, warn us that the neglect of venial sin
inevitably leads at last to a fall from grace.
We are told of St. Paschal Baylon, that he
used to say the road to hell was as surely paved
with many little sins as with one great one.

CHAPTER XI

THE CHUKCH THE HOME OF GRACE

1. The Catholic Church the Home of Grace. 2. Situation
of Heretics as regards Salvation. 3. Case of Jews and
Mahommedans. 4. Problem of the Pagan World.
5. Theory of a Limhus Adultorum rejected.

1. The New Testament never allows us to
lose sight of the truth that the Catholic Church
alone is the home of grace. The Church is the
company of the redeemed — the society of those
who, through the Passion of Christ Jesus, have
been delivered from the bondage of sin, and
reconciled to God. But this deliverance from
sin consists, as we have seen, in the possession
of sanctify ing grace. It is this that reconciles
us with God, that elevates us to the dignity of
His children, that procures for us the indwel-
ling of the Holy Ghost. Christ, our Lord,
purchased these benefits for all mankind.
Through His messengers He offers them to the
whole world. But the greater part of men
reject them : they have little desire for blessings

222

THE HOME OF GRACE 223

which belong to another life. Their whole
interests are centred on this present existence ;
and they will have nothing to say to privileges
which, as far as this life is concerned, entail
self-denial and sacrifice. Some, however,
welcome the oifer, and desire to partake of the
blessings. The conditions imposed on them are
simple. They must believe the message, and
enter the Church. Faith, as we have already
explained, is an essential prerequisite, for God
deals with us as rational beings. Our accept-
ance of salvation must be a free act of our
own. We cannot be saved unless we seek
salvation, nor can we seek salvation unless we
believe the message which announces it.
Baptism admits us into the Church ; and in
admitting us to the number of Christ's
followers, incorporates us into Him. We
become members of His mystical body, branches
of the true Vine, partakers of all that He won
for man on Calvary.

It is of the first importance to note that
union with Christ is only conferred upon us by
admission into the corporate society of the
Church. We do not attain salvation indepen-
dently of her, but as her members. It is to
the Church that Christ has committed the
gifts and graces which he merited for man.

224 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

The Divine revelation of truth, the sacrifice of
the Mass, the seven fountains of grace, which
we term sacraments — these are hers to dispense.
If we desire the benefits of Christ's redemption,
we must seek them in the Church. We can
only obtain the privileges of sons of God by
our admission into the family of God.

It is this that explains the teaching of our
Lord and the apostles, that outside the Church
salvation cannot be found. '' He that believeth
and is baptized, shall be saved," says our Lord ;
** but he that believeth not, shall be condemned "
(Mark xvi. 16). To St. Paul the world outside
the Church is the kingdom of the Evil One.
**God," he says, "hath delivered us from the
power of darkness, and hath translated us into
the kingdom of the Son of His love"
(Col. i. 13). And speaking of the excommuni-
cation by which he had excluded the heretics
Hymenseus and Alexander from the Church,
he says simply, " Whom I delivered unto
Satan" (1 Tim. i. 20).

The voice of Christian tradition has ever
spoken to the same effect. In the very first
age of the Church, St. Ignatius of Antioch,
writing in a.d. 107, says: **Be not deceived,
my brethren. If any man followeth one
that maketh schism, he doth not inherit

THE HOME OF GEACE 225

the kingdom of God. If anyone walketh in
strange doctrine, he hath no fellowship with
the Passion." ^ A little later, Origen writes as
follows : " Let no man deceive himself. Outside
this house " {i.e., outside the Church) *' none is
saved."* And his great contemporary, St.
Cyprian, is no less explicit : " He cannot have
God for his Father who has not the Church
for his mother." ^ The truth is often succinctly
expressed in the form, Extra Ecclesiam nulla
solus (Outside the Church there is no salva-
tion) ; and, as thus enunciated, has long been
accepted as a recognized principle of Catholic
theology.

This Divine society was endowed by our
Lord, not merely with the internal gifts of
which we have been speaking, but with certain
visible characteristics challenging the attention
of the whole world, and plainly declaring its
supernatural origin to all men, to the un-
lettered as well as to the learned. Had He
not done this, His work for men would have
been incomplete. It would have availed little
that He should have merited on their behalf
the grace which makes them sons of God, and

"^ Ad. Fhiladelpk^ n. 3.

2 Horn, in Jos., iii. 5. (P.G. xiii., 841.)

• D§ Unit.f c. vi.

15

226 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

should have committed it to His Church to
dispense, if they were unable to distinguish His
Church from those bodies of mere human
institution which falsely claim that name.
One of these characteristics, that of unity, He
proclaimed, in the most solemn terms, on the
last night of His life on earth, to be, in a special
manner, the distinctive mark of His mystical
body. He declared that the unity of the
Church should symbolize on earth the unity of
the Three Divine Persons, and should be so
manifestly supernatural as to compel the
world to acknowledge that He who founded
this Church came from God. St. John has
reported His words for us : '* The glory which
Thou hast given Me, I have given to them;
that they may be one, even as We are One :
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be
made perfect in one ; and the world may know
that Thou hast sent Me " (John xvii. 22-23).
There is no need to labour this point. The
Catholic Church is spread over the whole world,
and gathers in its members from men of every
race, and every degree of cultivation — from the
civilized and the barbarous, from the white and
the coloured, from the conquering and the
conquered. An institution which can unite
these diverse elements in one, so that each

THE HOME OF GRACE 227

individual within it recognizes every other as
his brother in God's sight ; which can transcend
the disruptive forces this diversity involves,
must be of Divine origin. A doctrine which,
remaining one and the same, can satisfy the
needs of all those different classes, can be none
other than God's truth. And the same con-
clusion is forced upon us, if we view this unity,
not in respect of space, but of time. All other
systems of thought yield to the solvents which
time applies to them. On one point after
another, they are weighed in the balances and
found wanting : they pass into the limbo of
those teachings which humanity has outgrown
and discarded. The dogmatic system of the
Catholic Church alone is changeless. No
vestige of it ever perishes ; the truths which
she proclaims to-day are the same as those
which the apostles announced to the world.

This unity does not establish the Church's
claims simply because, having regard to man's
tendency to divisions, it presupposes a super-
natural power to effect it. Viewed in itself, it
is somethinor Divine. Discord is the work of
the devil ; and so, too, is error, in all its
multiple varieties. Unity and concord come
from God, and the truth, when once revealed
by Him, must necessarily be changeless as

228 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Himself. The unity of the Church as a single
brotherhood is an apt symbol of the unity of
the Divine Persons ; the unity of her doctrine
in all ages is the earthly expression of the
immutable Divine truth.

Throughout Christian history there has ever
been one only body which has displayed this
mark of unity. This body is the Church in
communion with the see of Rome, and ruled
by the successor of St. Peter. She, and she
alone, has the right to claim to be the home of
grace.

2. It is, nevertheless, notorious that the
Catholic Church confidently hopes for the
salvation of many of those who are outside her
visible communion. And it may well be asked
how this hope is compatible with a teaching
which, at first sight, is so rigorous as is that
which we have just explained. The considera-
tion of this point will engage our attention
during the remainder of this chapter.

It is plain that the case of heretics and
schismatics, who retain belief in the divinity of
our Lord, and in a great part of the Christian
revelation, is very different from that of Jews
and Mahommedans ; while these latter, again,
possess at least a knowledge of the true God,
and a belief in the fact of revelation, in which

THE HOME OF GRACE 229

the pagan world has no part. It will be
necessary to treat of these classes separately.

As regards heretics the Church distinguishes
sharply between culpable and inculpable, or,
to employ theological terminology, formal and
material heresy. Those are guilty of formal
heresy who, knowing that to the Catholic Church
has been entrusted the guardianship of Christ's
revelation, and that she teaches such and such
a doctrine, refuse to accept it, and fall away
from her. Such were the heresiarchs, and a
multitude of their immediate followers. These
do, indeed, cut themselves off from salvation.
But there are tens of thousands brought up in
heresy, who have no such knowledge. From
their earliest childhood they have been imbued
with the belief that the Church's claims are false,
and when they refuse her doctrines, they have
no thought that they are rejecting the divinely
accredited teacher of the human race. On the
contrary, they sincerely wish to believe all that
Christ has revealed, and, so far as they know,
they do accept His teaching. Were it plain to
them that the Catholic Church, and she alone,
is the fold of Christ, they would hasten to
enter her communion. They have the gift of
faith, though they are accidentally deprived
of external membership in the Church. They

230 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

belong to her in desire (voto). Moreover, vast
numbers of them have been validly baptized ;
and baptism, even though administered by
heretics, makes those who receive it, little as
they dream of such a thing, members of the
Catholic Church. Should they fall into mortal
sin, the way of forgiveness is not closed to them.
An act of perfect contrition can restore them to
grace. It is true that our Lord ordained that
every grave sin should be confessed in the
tribunal of penance. But here, again, so far is
the merely material heretic from refusing to
obey, that he is rightly said to have the
implicit desire of fulfilling the command. For
his act of contrition contains the purpose to
fulfil all God's commands, without exception.
He can only realize this purpose in so far as his
knowledge extends, and as he is ignorant of
the precept to confess, he fails to fulfil it. But
his desire to obey extends to all our Lord's
laws, and, hence, implicitly even to this
one. It is ignorance alone that hinders him
from accomplishing it. There is, then, nothing
to hinder us from hoping that very many of
those brought up in heresy may be saved. But
no mistake could be greater than to suppose
that they are saved through the Lutheranism
or Calvinism which they profess, that one

THE HOME OF GEACE 231

religion is as good as another, and that the

gates of the heavenly Jerusalem are as numerous

as the sects of Protestantism. The grace which

saves them is the grace of the Catholic Church.

They are saved, not because of, but in spite of,

their material adherence to the heresy of Calvin,

or Luther, or Queen Elizabeth. And, be it

noted, it must not be supposed that there are

two Churches, a visible and an invisible, and

that salvation is through the invisible Church,

whereas membership in the visible Church is of

minor moment. The promises of Christ were

made to the one corporate body — the visible

Church. It is this Church, not an unknown

invisible Church, that is the home of grace.

The actual graces which God bestows on those

outside her communion have, as their ultimate

aim, to bring the recipients within her fold.

And it is as belonging by desire to her that

those of whom we are speaking attain salvation.

For heresy to be inculpable it is requisite

that the person should be " invincibly ignorant **

that he is in heresy. A man is said to be

** invincibly ignorant " as to a point, when his

ignorance is such that he is unaware of the

obligation of further inquiry regarding it. On

the other hand, his ignorance is *' vincible "

when he is conscious of the duty of further

232 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

investigation, but neglects to take adequate
measures to that effect. It happens occasion-
ally that a man, whose ignorance as to the
Church's claims was previously invincible, comes
to suspect that, after all, they may be true,
and, nevertheless, in view of the serious sacrifices
which certainty on the point might entail,
deliberately ceases to pursue his inquiries.
Ignorance such as this is vincible ignorance, and,
in view of the fact that all men are bound to
make great efforts to attain clear knowledge in
matters affecting the salvation of their soul,
is culpable, not inculpable.

Our hope that many Protestants will obtain
salvation should not blind us to the terrible
disadvantages under which they are compelled
to seek it — disadvantages so great that a
Catholic should reckon himself guilty of a
grievous sin against the virtue of charity if he
neglects to do what in him lies for the conversion
of his non-Catholic neighbours. We cannot
here do more than mention one or two of the
dijBSculties in their path. For them, as we have
seen, the forgiveness of grave sin can only be
obtained by an act of perfect contrition : this
alone can restore them to sanctifying grace.
Yet they know nothing of sanctifying grace.
The founders of Protestantism denied its very

THE HOME OF GRACE 233

existence. As a rule they have never learned
how to make an act of contrition. Their
ordinary books of instruction make no mention
of any difference between the sorrow which
springs from love and the sorrow whose motive
is the mere hope of heaven. They are only
taught in a general way that God forgives those
who truly repent. Further, they lack the
assurance of pardon which the sacrament of
penance conveys. And there is no need to
point out that it is just this assurance of pardon
which makes it comparatively easy for a
Catholic to rise again after a serious fall from
grace ; and that, where it is wanting, the
diflSculty of rising must be immeasurably
greater. Again, they lack the sacrament of the
Holy Eucharist. And, apart from this gift,
none can avoid grave sin save by a miracle of
God's special favour.

Hitherto we have spoken of Protestants as
though the possession of faith were the normal
thing amongst them. Unfortunately this is
not the case. They may, in their childhood,
have been instructed in the tenets of some sect
— Anglicanism, Methodism, Congregationalism.
But when reason begins to emancipate itself,
they soon discover that they have no guarantee
for the truth of what they have been taught.

234 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

They acknowledge no infallible teacher, for the
Bible has long lost its authority amongst them.
And where there is no infallible guide, human
reason becomes the sole criterion of truth.
Without more ado all that constitutes a
difficulty to the modern spirit is thrown away
as antiquated — miracles, eternal punishment,
the Virgin birth. Only too often all belief in
a Divine revelation is definitely discarded.
And, as we have seen, apart from supernatural
faith, no one can hope to obtain sanctifying
grace.

3. The case of Jews and Mahommedans
differs materially from that of Protestants. It
is true that, with all their errors, they worship
the same God as ourselves — the God who
created the world, and who revealed His law to
Moses. But, on the other hand, they reject
the claim of Jesus Christ to be the Eternal Son
of God, and they repudiate His teaching. At
first sight this would seem to exclude them
from all hope of salvation. For there is no
salvation save by faith in Christ. " There is
no other name under heaven given to men,
whereby we must be saved" (Acts iv. 12).
Yet recent theologians almost universally teach
that where ignorance regarding Christ's claims
is invincible, explicit faith is not absolutely

THE HOME OF GRACE 235

requisite, and that a Jew or a Mahommedan
who believes in general whatever God may
have revealed regarding the means He has
ordained for the salvation of man, thereby
makes an act of faith which implicitly includes
belief in Christ. He who thus accepts God s
revelation can make an act of supernatural
charity, and find sanctifying grace. Undoubt-
edly the hindrances to salvation are here even
greater than they are among Protestants. The
light of truth shines far more dimly, and the
devil has established his empire over souls more
firmly. Yet salvation is not impossible. An
act of faith such as we have described renders
a man a member of the Church in desire, and
thus he may save his soul, not, indeed, through
his false religion, but in spite of it.

4. The problem of the pagan world has at all
periods given rise to much questioning. If
sanctifying grace, without which there can be
no salvation, is given to no one except to such
as have, by an act of faith, accepted God's
supernatural revelation, what are we to think
of the multitudes brought up in heathenism ?
What opportunity have these myriads of
making an act of faith ? What knowledge have
they of the true God ? In the Middle Ages that
diflSculty was scarcely felt. Geographical

236 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

knowledge was most imperfect, and there was
a general belief that the main tenets of
Christianity, and the chief arguments for its
truth, had penetrated to the remotest parts of
the earths surface. The great voyages of
the fifteenth century, and, above all, the
discovery of America, revolutionized men's ideas
on this subject. They realized for the first time
how vast were the populations to whom no ves-
tige of the Gospel message had penetrated. In
our own days a somewhat similar effect was
produced when the buried civilizations of the
Euphrates and Nile Valleys were laid bare, and
the study of palaeontology showed at how
remote a period human history began. There
is little doubt that, to many minds, the new
perspectives thus opened constituted a grave
difficulty against the Church's teaching as to
the need of faith.

The difficulty does not seem insoluble. A
long series of investigations into the religions
of uncivilized peoples seems to place it beyond
a doubt that there is no race, however degraded,
that does not possess a belief in a supreme God,
who has made Himself known to man by
revelation, and who vindicates the law of right
and wrong by rewarding the good and punish-
ing evil-doers. It is true that, as externally

THE HOME OF GRACE 237

manifested, the religion of savages is often
mere devil-worship ; for they are apt to hold it
more essential to propitiate the pov^ers of evil,
who are likely to harm them, than to implore
the help of God. But this is not incompatible
with their possession of a religious belief such
as we have indicated. Now there is nothing
extravagant in the supposition that amid the
superstitions and immoralities which have
overlaid religion among them, all pagan peoples
have preserved this remnant of the primitive
revelation made to our first parents. Indeed,
it would have been difiicult for it to perish ; for
the ordered harmony of nature, and the voice
of conscience within us, conspire to proclaim the
existence of God, the Founder of the universe,
and the moral Law-giver. We do not mean
that the source of the beliefs of which we speak
is to be found in the deductions of reason.
Nowhere does religion refer its origin to human
reasoning, but in every case to a communica-
tion made by God to man. Indeed, were their
belief based on mere natural reason, it would
not be belief in a Divine revelation at all. But it
will not be denied that, granted the existence
of a revelation, the truths in question are so
consonant to the testimony of reason that they
could hardly pass into oblivion.

238 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

If this be as we have supposed, we have
what is essential to an act of supernatural and
saving faith. The apostle, speaking of the
necessity of faith to salvation, thus describes it :
"He that cometh to God, must believe that
He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that
seek Him " (Heb. xi. 6). These two points
include implicitly all that God has revealed.
If a man believes, regarding the God of revela-
tion, that '* He is," he implicitly believes all
that He has taught concerning His own nature ;
and if he believes that *' He is a rewarder of
them that seek Him," he implicitly holds all that
He has told us as to the means which He has
ordained for our salvation.

There is, however, one serious difficulty,
which calls for consideration. No one can
make an act of faith in any truth, accepting it
on God's authority, unless he has sure know-
ledge that God has revealed it. He must have
full certainty that He has spoken to man, and
spoken thus ; and he must have sufficient
grounds for this certainty. What grounds has
the pagan for knowing that God has revealed
these truths ? The Jew can appeal to the
miracles of Sinai, and to a tradition that has
come down to lym from the very origins of our

8T. MICHAEL'S \*

y

THE HOME OF GEACE 239

race. The Mahommedan, to the universal
testimony of the wise and good, not merely
amongst his own co-religionists, but amongst
Catholics and Jews as well. But the savage
learns these doctrines as part of the traditions
of his tribe. His authority for them is no
better than that on which he receives the
grotesque fables of his tribal mythology. What
adequate grounds can he have for an act of
faith ? To this, it may be replied, that to the
simple mind it would be far more difficult
to suppose that God has not made a revelation
to His creatures, than that He has done so.
And the two doctrines requisite for saving
faith are so agreeable to reason, that a man
can have no reason for doubting that they, at
least, are truths He has revealed. He will
recognize them as such, even when he has
come to realize the falsity of much that passes
in his tribe for religion. For if he be a seeker
after God, God will not fail to enlighten his
conscience as to the debasing and evil character
of the observances in which he has been
brought up. Hence, there seems little difficulty
in supposing that, with the help of actual grace,
he may make a genuine act of faith as to the
two great truths. In this way he unites

240 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

himself in desire to the Church; and thus he
may become a partaker in the salvation which
it is hers, and hers alone, to dispense.

Such is the reply given by competent Catholic
theologians to the difficulty which every
follower of Christ must necessarily feel re-
garding the fate of pagans.^ The medieval
theologians, including St. Thomas, believing as
they did that a knowledge of the Gospel was
within the reach of all men of good will, were
disposed to insist on the need of an explicit
faith in the Incarnation. But the difference
here is accidental, not essential. They admitted
the principle of implicit faith by allowing that
it had sufficed before the Gospel was preached.
And they affirm, as an absolutely certain truth,
that to every human being is offered the
opportunity of salvation. In more than one
passage of his works St. Thomas considers the
hypothetical case of a child nurtured, as was
Romulus, by beasts, and growing up in the
forests remote from all commerce with his kind.
He declares that, if one thus situated should
but correspond with the actual grace given to
him, God would not permit him to perish. He
would so dispose things by His Providence that
some Christian preacher should reach him, or

1 Cyf.j e.g., Vacant, Etudes Thdologiques, II., p. 123, seq.

THE HOME OF GRACE 241

He would even, if need were, send an angel to
reveal to him the necessary truths of faith.^

5. Some few writers have held that it is
simpler to admit that supernatural faith is, in
fact, out of the reach of pagans. It is
suggested that possibly those who have never
heard the Gospel fall under a different dis-
pensation of Divine Providence, and that it may
not be required of them that they should rise
to the supernatural order at all. May we not,
it is asked, suppose that there are many pagans
who, though destitute of faith, yet keep the
moral law so far as they know it, and thus
avoid formal mortal sin ? If so, it would seem
to follow that such as these after death attain,
not indeed to the supernatural happiness of
heaven, but to a natural happiness : that they
pass, in fact, to a limbus adultorum, identical, it
may be, with the limbus infantium, which all
acknowledge to be the destiny of unbaptized
infants. The idea, at first sight, seems to
afford a simpler solution of the problem than
that which we have offered. It is, however,
destitute of any support in Scripture, or in
tradition, and is regarded by all theologians as
inadmissible. Scripture, indeed, would appear

1 Q.D. de Verit, q. 14, art. 11, ad. 1 ; II. S. d. 28, q. 1,
art. 4, ad. 4 ; III. S. d. 25, q. 2, art. 1; q. 1 ad. 1.

16

242 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

to teach with sufficient plainness that there
are but two alternatives for men — heaven and
hell. When our Lord foretells the judgment of
the Last Day, He describes the judged as divided
into two classes alone, destined, respectively,
for the beatitude of heaven and for the fires
of hell. He speaks of that judgment as
embracing "all nations." According to the
hypothesis we are considering, the greater
part of humanity would be excluded from its
scope. Another weighty argument against it
is drawn from the manner in which the early
Christian apologists dealt with this difficulty,
when they were asked by their pagan opponents
what had been the fate of the countless
generations which had preceded Christ. They
did not answer that God had dealt with these
in another way : they replied that Christ was
" the Light that enlighteneth every man that
Cometh into this world," and that salvation
through Him had been possible to all. Again,
it is a dogma of faith, clearly expressed in
Scripture, and defined by the Church against
the Pelagians, that without the grace of God,
no man can for long avoid grave sin. This
teaching excludes the possibility of a pagan
remaining in the purely natural order, and,
nevertheless, living a life of virtue. But if it

THE HOME OF GEACE 243

be granted that whenever a pagan really lives
a virtuous life, he does so through the aid of
supernatural grace, there seems no reason
whatever why grace should not enable him to
elicit acts of faith and love, and thus attain
justification.

The fact is that the few writers who at the
close of the eighteenth century adopted this
view,^ were driven to it by a rigorist theory as
to the absolute necessity of an explicit faith in
the Incarnation, which had for some time been
prevalent in the French theological schools.
There can, of course, be no question of faith of
this kind in the pagan world. Hence, since it
is inconceivable that the greater part of the
human race is damned through no fault of its
own, they were compelled to invent some such
hypothesis as this. But their theory found
little support. It was universally recognized
that it could not be made to harmonize with
Catholic teaching, and that the real solution
of the difficulty must be sought in the doctrine
of implicit faith.

We have given a brief consideration to this
point ; for even now, from time to time, we find

1 None of these was a theologian of the first rank. The
most eminent was the Abbe Em^ry, Superior of the
Society of St. Sulpice, b. 1732, d. 1811,

244 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

the limbus adultorum put forward as being a
new and important suggestion towards the
solution of a dijQficult problem. It seemed well
to point out that it is no new idea, but that it
has long since been weighed and set aside by
those best qualified to judge.

CHAPTER XII

GEACE AND GLORY

1. The Divine Sonship Perfected. 2. The Beatific Vision.
3. The Love of the Blessed. 4. The Joy of the
Blessed. 5. " Accidental " Rewards.

1. The glory of the Blessed may be viewed
under two aspects : as the heritage due to
those who by grace have become the sons of
God, or as being itself the final perfection of
that sonship. It is under the former aspect
that it is generally regarded in Holy Scripture;
and it is in this light that we have hitherto
considered it. But there are not wanting pas-
sages which remind us, that though the Divine
adoption is already ours, yet our sonship
remains in this life inchoative and imperfect,
and can only find its full consummation in the
life to come. There is nothing to surprise us in
this. The cognate notion of salvation is
similarly considered from these two distinct
points of view. In some passages, our salvation
is spoken of as something that has been already

245

246 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

bestowed upon us. Thus, in a passage already

quoted, St. Paul says : *' According to His

mercy He saved us by the laver of regeneration

and renovation of the Holy Ghost " (Tit. iii. 5,

cf, 1 Pet. iii. 21). Elsewhere it is held up as

something not yet attained, an object of hope

and desire. '^ At present," says the apostle,

'* it is in hope that we are saved" (Rom. viii. 24).^

In this same passage he speaks of our sonship

to God in the following terms : " Ourselves also

which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even

we ourselves also, groan within ourselves,

waiting for our adoption, to wit the redemption

of our body " (Rom. viii. 23, R.V.). In these

words he clearly affirms that our adoption

cannot have its full and complete perfection

until our final glorification. This is implied^

too, in the statement that we have received

** the firstfruits " of the Spirit. For our sonship

is the work of the Holy Ghost within us : it is

His presence within us that confers on us the

gift of the new life. Yet at present it is the

firstfruits only of the Spirit that we possess.

That which He has done for us is but the pledge

and earnest of what He will effect eventually J

1 Both the Douay Bible and the R.V. give " by hope "
and not "in hope." This rendering fails to give the
meaning of the original. Crampon's Bible translates more
correctly : " Car c'est en esp6rance que nous sommes
sauves."

GRACE AND GLOEY 247

(2 Cor. V. 5, Rom. viii. 1). The same truth,
again, is contained in those passages in which
St. Paul exhorts his readers to put oS the old
man, and to put on the new (Eph. iv. 22-24,
Col. iii. 10). If the old man still cleaves to us
and we must still labour to put on the new, it is
manifest that the consummation of our sonship
is not yet achieved.

We have seen in a previous chapter (Chap.
II. § 3) that St. John declares sonship to be
incompatible with sin. '* Whosoever is born of
God," he says, " committeth not sin : for His
seed abideth in him. And he cannot sin,
because he is born of God " (1 John iii. 9). The
sonshij) which we possess here, is, indeed,
incompatible with mortal sin. So long as we
retain it, it excludes sins of that degree ; and if
we deliberately violate God's law in a grave
matter, we thereby forfeit our adoption. But
venial sin is found even in the saints. Hence,
both St. Ambrose and St. Augustine tell us
that St John's words must be understood, not
in reference to the imperfect state of sonship
which is all we have here, but of the perfect
state which will be ours in heaven.^ ,

1 August., Con. II. Epist. Pelag., iv., 31 (P.L. xliv., 634) ;
De Pecc. Merit.^ ii. 9 (P.L. xliv., 156). In the former
of these passages he quotes at some length from a work of
St. Ambrose no longer extant.

248 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

It is of no little importance that we should
take account of this aspect of glory, and not
consider it simply in the light of reward
attached to grace. As we have already pointed
out (Chap. II. § 1), the relation between the two
is not merely external, depending simply on a
Divine decree that so much glory shall be the
recompense of so much grace : but glory is the
development of grace, and issues from grace as
the fruit from the seed. It is when we view
glory as the consummation of grace, that the
true connection between them is most clearly
seen.

Glory, as we saw, consists primarily in the
beatific vision. Scripture declares in the most
explicit terms that the just are to behold God
'^ face to face " : and the same truth is affirmed
by the unanimous voice of the fathers, and by
the express definitions of the Church. The
possession of the beatific vision is the final
culmination of our sonship : nor is any further
advance than this conceivable. For to see God
is to share in the bliss proper to God Himself.
It is to enjoy the knowledge, the love, and the
delight in which the Divine bliss consists, and
which are utterly beyond the reach of any
creature's natural faculties. It is because in
grace we possess all this in germ, that the

GRACE AND GLORY 249

fathers of the Church speak of the gift of grace
as a deification. Our '' essential " reward lies
in this, and in this alone. But the state of
glory carries also with it certain prerogatives,
great in themselves, though not approaching
the beatific vision in dignity. These are
called ** accidental " rewards, and without some
mention of these any account of celestial
happiness would be incomplete. Our purpose
in this chapter is to indicate very briefly the
principal characteristics of both these elements
of our final beatitude.

2. Though the beatific vision, in addition to
the knowledge of God, includes the love of God
and the joy consequent on the possession of
God, it is knowledge that holds the first place.
In beholding God the soul has reached the
final term of its journey. It has attained its
last end. Love and joy are consequent on
that attainment : they do not constitute it. It
is true that in this life the love of charity
brings us nearer to God than the knowledge of
God which faith affords. But this is because
faith is but an imperfect knowledge — the
knowledge of those who are ** absent from the
Lord'* (2 Cor. v. 6, 7) — whereas charity, even
here, is a love which unites us to God Himself.
The knowledge of the beatific vision is a

250 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

knowledge by which we are present to God
and possess Him. Some few, indeed, of the
great theologians have disputed this view, and
have been inclined to assign the chief part in our
beatitude to love. But apart from the reason
which we have just given, the words of
Scripture appear to be decisive. The inspired
authors speak of the sight of God, not of union
with God by love, as our ultimate reward.

What then is it to see God? It is to behold,
and in beholding to possess, the fulness of all
Being, all Truth, all Goodness, all Beauty.
Men have ever seen that these things are the
worthiest ends of human endeavour. And here
in this life, if they can discover some fragmentary
aspect of truth, if they can seize some fugitive
vision of beauty, they count that they have
done much. But the sight of God will display
to our gaze the very fountain-head of all these,
the adorable source of all reality and all
perfection — the Living God. We shall see
Him, not as faintly mirrored in His created
works, but as He is. The mysteries of the
Godhead — the ineffable splendours of the Divine
Processions will reveal themselves to us. We
shall behold the eternal generation of the Son,
the procession by which the Holy Ghost, the
subsistent love of the Father and the Son,

GEACE AND GLORY 251

proceeds eternally from these Divine Persons.
We shall know these things with a knowledge
similar to that of the Three Persons themselves.
Not less than this can be meant by our Lord's
words : "Father, I will that where I am, they
also whom Thou hast given Me, may be with
Me : that they may see My glory which Thou
hast given Me, because Thou hast loved Me
before the creation of the world " (John xvii. 26).
It does not lie in our power to develop
this theme. In speaking of this subject we
can do no more than point out in a few bald
words what is meant by the Vision of God.
We are dealing with matters as to which
human language is not merely inadequate but
altogether powerless.

The beatitude of which we are speaking
possesses a feature which differentiates it so
widely from any joys which we know here, as
to claim special notice. It is changeless. In it
the Blessed enter on a final state, which admits
of no alteration. They partake in their degree
of the Divine changelessness. The very act by
which the soul beholds God is a single abiding
act, lasting for ever. At first sight it is
difficult for us to realize that this can be an
element, and a necessary element, in perfect
happiness. It would seem on the contrary as

252 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

though it must have an opposite effect. Happi-
ness, as we know it, involves change. Yet a
little consideration will convince us that this
need for change is due solely to the conditions
of our present existence, and to the imperfec-
tion of the joys which it affords. The things
which bring us pleasure do but satisfy some
one or other of our multifarious needs and
desires. What delights the eye, leaves, it may
be, the mind unsatisfied ; and what brings joy
to the mind, leaves the body wearied and
relaxed. Hence, no pleasure has any long
continuance. Other needs make themselves
felt, and mar our sense of joy. Indeed, usually
it is not long before we become conscious of
limitations and imperfections in what at first
pleased us beyond measure. And it may even
be that our attention fixes itself on these
shortcomings, till pleasure is turned to distaste.
Moreover, we ourselves are ever changing. We
outgrow the pleasures which at one time meant
much to us : we crave for something new.

In the Vision of God granted to the Blessed
none of these conditions is present. In it
they attain the Infinite Good. Here there is
no limitation, no imperfection ; this happiness
is one which can never cloy. Moreover, no
unsatisfied craving can assert itself, proving

GRACE AND GLORY 253

that our bliss, after all, is but partial and
incomplete. The Infinite Good fulfils every
need and every desire of the soul. Henceforth,
the sense of void is for that soul an impossibility.
Nor, again, can new needs spring up through
changes in the soul's state. While we live on
earth, the soul changes : it grows in grace, and
thus attains to new and higher degrees of son-
ship to God. With its entry into bliss, its
growth and its development cease.

The point we have just mentioned should
not be overlooked. Non- Catholic writers often
speak as though our future state must needs be
one of endless progress ; as though eternal life
could not be other than a condition of growth
and advance. This is not the case. Our
participation in the beatific vision is deter-
mined by our measure of sanctifying grace.
There could be no addition to our beatitude
unless there were a corresponding increase in
grace. But we know that when this life is
over, no such increase will be given us. While
we live here we can acquire grace by good
works and through the sacraments of the
Church. But after death no further oppor-
tunity is given. The grace we possess when
death befalls us fixes the measure of our
blessedness for ever.

254 CATHOLIC DOCTEINE OF GRACE

The life of God is not, like ours, conditioned
by time. Although we are unable to imagine
a life in which time has no part, we can
understand that existence in time is an
imperfect form of being. To live in time is to
possess life in parts, one part following another.
It is to be ever losing what we have, ever
passing on to something new. He, who is
infinite in all perfection, cannot lose aught of
His life, nor acquire anything He did not
already possess. In Him there is no flow of
time. His life is a moment which never passes
— the everlasting Now of eternity. The act by
which the Blessed know God is nothing less
than a share in that eternal life. The stream
of time can rob them of no portion of that
glorious existence. The state upon which they
have entered is one that is not measured by
the passage of the hours. They have reached
the goal. They possess a changeless life — a
life summed up in a single act, which lasts for
ever, and by which they partake in the eternity
of God.

What we have said refers, it should be
understood, to the " essential '' reward alone.
As we shall see, all change is not excluded from
the life of the Blessed. In regard to created
things, they acquire new knowledge and maj^ be

GRACE AND GLORY 255

moved to new activities. But this pertains to
their ** accidental " reward, of which we shall
say something shortly.

It may, perhaps, be asked how the reward of
one soul can differ from that of another ; for
there can be no such thing as seeing a portion
of God — God has no parts : he who sees God
must see Him in His entiretv- This is true. Yet
it is clear that no created faculty can receive
more than a certain measure of that ocean of
light which is God. The Blessed behold God
in His entirety, but no one of them knows Him
as He can be known. He Himself alone can
fathom the abyss, and know in their fulness the
illimitable perfections of the Godhead. Each
soul that enters heaven will possess the Vision
in the degree which his powers admit : and, as
we have seen, that degree is determined by the
grace within his soul. But in every case
the soul's happiness attains the full measure
that for it is possible. None envies the higher
lot of another. For none desires to possess
more. The cup of each is filled to the very
limit of its capacity.

3. If it is by the Vision of God that, strictly
speaking, we attain our last end, the love of
God follows as a necessary consequence. By a
necessity of our being we are drawn ^o th§

256 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Good. Whatever we seek for here, we seek
because it appears to us to be something good.
Good is ever the object of the will, the
motive which leads us to act. Even when
the sinner chooses evil, he does so because
he counts it to be good. What, then, will be
the attraction exerted on the soul when it
beholds God face to face : for to see Him is to
see the source of all good ? All created beauty-
is but the far-off reflection of some single aspect
of the uncreated loveliness of God. All virtue,
all wisdom, all power, all that can move our
admiration and wake our enthusiasm here —
these are but streamlets descending from God,
the fountain-head of good. It does not lie
within our power to form any conception of the
intensity of the love which at that instant will
well up within the soul, of the overwhelming
force by which it will be drawn to Him. If we
suppose some planet to leave its orbit, and fly
with unimaginable velocity to the sun, it does
but afford an inadequate illustration of what the
soul must experience when it is admitted to the
sight of God. It flies to Him, to be bound to
Him for ever in the embrace of love.

The love of the Blessed for God, like their
knowledge, is a single abiding act which knows
no change. Here our love towards Him cannot be

GKAOE AND GLORY 257

constantly in exercise. The various occupations
of our daily round compel us to turn our attention
to many different matters, and render it impos-
sible for us to keep the thought of God continually
before our minds. Moreover, the natural object
of our faculties is this concrete world of which
we have sensible experience. It is hard for us
to fix the mind for long on that which we cannot
see, or hear, or touch. The images of sense dis-
tract the attention, and carry the thought down
from heaven to earth. But it is only when we
think of God that we can love Him. Hence, in
the very nature of things our love of God is inter-
mittent. It cannot, as we would wish, dominate
continuously all the activities of the soul.
Besides, even when we think of God, we are not
immediately and necessarily drawn to acts of love.
We walk by faith, and God does not manifest
Himself to us in His full attractiveness. The art
of loving God must be learnt by degrees.

But when faith has passed into sight all
impediments will be done away. Then nothing
will be able to distract us, nothing will hinder
us from feeling the infinite sweetness of God.
And as our knowledge will be continuous, so
will be our love. It will be impossible for us even
for an instant not to love Him. Our whole
existence will be the perfect fulfilment of our

17

258 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Lord's command : ** Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy
whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with
all thy mind " (Luke x. 27).

The love of heaven excludes all possibility of
sin. We fall into sin here because in this life
we see but dimly the attractiveness of God.
Indeed, the love of God, involving, as it must,
obedience to God's commands, may demand the
sacrifice of much that is agreeable to human
nature. It is only too possible for the will to
turn aside from the eternal good, which it knows
by faith alone, and choose some temporal good,
worthless in comparison, but which offers itself
here and now. But to those who enjoy the
beatific vision nothing can enter into rivalry
with God. To suppose that the soul which sees
the full glory of the Divine Essence should prefer
some miserable fleeting satisfaction, is to imagine
the most extreme of impossibilities. Moreover,
since this love is perpetual and changeless, it
can never happen that temptation should come
when the soul is oflT its guard — when it is not
loving God, or not loving Him with its full
fervour — and coming at such a moment should
seduce it from its allegiance.

We may go yet further. The soul which
enjoys the beatific vision is so dominated by

GRACE AND GLORY 259

the love of God that it is impossible for it to
love anything save in reference to that supreme
love. For the Divine Essence is Essential
Goodness itself. Just as in this life it is im-
possible for us to desire anything save for some
goodness belonging to it, so those who see God,
and in seeing Him behold Essential Goodness,
can desire nothing save for God's sake. Their
love for other things is of necessity subordinated
to and referred to their love of God. Whatever
else claims their affection, claims it as leading
up to this as to its end. In this life one of our
chiefest dangers lies in the fact that we become
attached to things for their own sake, and
independently of their relation to God. Hence
a conflict between the two affections may ensue ;
and when love for the creature has become
excessive, sin is the result. But when the soul
has found the Infinite Good, this cannot be.
This must be the ultimate aim, the last end of
every motion of the soul. It cannot in the
nature of things admit any love which does not
tend towards Him.

4. In regard to the joy of the Blessed, it is
not necessary to speak at any length. What
has been said as to their knowledge and love of
God will suflBce to show what must be the
immensity of their joy. For joy consists in the

260 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

possession of some good for which we crave,
and in the consciousness of that possession.
And the greater the good that is in question,
the deeper the desire which we have felt for it,
and the more secure our possession, the more
intense will be our joy. Here the good
attained is of infinite worth. Moreover, the
possession of it is absolutely secure. The goods
of this life, honour, endowments of body or of
mind, wealth — all these are ours only for a
short time. We must part from them at death ;
and often they leave us long before death
approaches. But our tenure of the Infinite
Good is eternal : nothing can rob us of that.
The degree in which we desire that supreme
good depends chiefly on ourselves. Our
increase in the virtue of charity is a matter for
our own efforts. The greater our love for God
here, the more intense will be our joy in
heaven.

It is this aspect of joy on which Scripture
seems to lay most stress, when speaking of the
life to come. Often it seeks to bring it home to
us by way of contrast with the trials of earth.
Heaven is the place " where death shall be no
more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow: for
the former things have passed away " (Apoc.
xxi. 4). But in other passages it is set before

GRACE AND GLORY 261

us In Its more positive aspect. It Is a feast to
which God bids us — the bridal feast of the Son
of God with His Spouse the Church (Apoc. xlx.) ;
it is a celestial city where we are to dwell
(Apoc. xxll.) ; It is a kingdom prepared for us
from the foundation of the world (Matt. xxv.
34). In this way God has sought to make us
realize that the joys of earth, which move us so
strongly, and for the sake of which so many
forfeit their heavenly inheritance, are worthless
as dust in comparison with what He offers us
in heaven.

To some among the saints has been given, as
it were, some foretaste of heavenly joys even
during this life. Those on whom this high
privilege has been bestowed assure us with one
consent that so Immeasurably do these sur-
pass anything which this earth can give, that
an hour of this bliss would be cheaply purchased
by a lifetime of penance. Such Is the testimony
of St Theresa ; such that of St. John of the
Cross ; such, again, that of B. Angela of
Foligno. Strange it Is that we should be so
slow of heart to appreciate these things, and
should find It so difficult to make the smallest
sacrifices to gain so stupendous a prize.

5. Hitherto, we have considered only the
" essential " reward of the just — the possession

262 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

of God through the beatific vision, and the
love and joy immediately consequent upon this.
But it is manifest that the knowledge and the
love of the Blessed extend also to creatures,
and that here they possess a distinct, though
dependent, source of happiness. It is this
which we term their " accidental " reward. In
regard to it, revelation tells us something ; and
there are also certain conclusions which claim
so high a degree of antecedent probability
that they have won the universal assent of
theologians. Thus all admit that the souls
which see God, behold Him as the fountain of
all truth, and thus participate, each in his
measure, in His infinite knowledge. In this
way, it is held, each is made aware of what
passes upon earth, so far as it may concern him.
The saints thus know of the honours paid them
by the Church, and of the prayers offered to
them, and are able to exert their power with
God on behalf of their clients. Thus, too, every
one of the Blessed learns how it fares with
those who are dear to him.

Again, it is the lot of most men to die before
they have seen their labours for God bear fruit.
Other hands reap what they have sown. But
the consolation which they did not enjoy in
this life, is theirs in the next. The full results

GRACE AND GLORY 263

of their toil, the rich harvest it bears, as, with
the passage of time, its influence spreads more
and more widely, is made known to them in
God. This does not, it is true, increase their
essential joy. That, as we have seen, is fixed
at the moment of death, and is determined by
the sanctifying grace they then possess. But
it should not, on that account, be passed over,
when we reckon up the rewards prepared for
those who work for God. This particular
reward, indeed, supplies a reply to the difficulty
urged by not a few theologians against St.
Thomas's doctrine of the recovery of merits.
We saw in Chapter X., § 5, that those who fall
mto mortal sin, and subsequently return to grace,
do not necessarily recover their title to the full
reward which they forfeited, but only in propor-
tion to the fervour with which they repent.
It is contended, as we there pointed out, by
some, that in the case in which a man has
previously possessed much grace and done
many good works, but rises from sin with little
fervour, the recovery of merits, as so explained,
becomes merely nominal. We showed what we
regarded as adequate reasons for regarding the
objection as ill-founded. But here it should
also be noted that in such a case, even though
a man s essential reward is determined solely

264 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

by the grace in which he rises, he will, to all
eternity, possess a special joy in those good
works which he did when his store of grace was
ampler, and in the fruits which they have
borne. ^

Yet another subsidiary reward of the just
lies in the joy derived from the companionship
of the angels and the saints. In that city of
the Blessed there will be no possibility of those
rivalries and disagreements which mar the
happiness of human intercourse. None will
find the presence of any other irksome. All
earthly imperfections will have been purged
away. There, love binds all together. All are
dear to God, and the soul that loves God must
needs love those whom God loves. This will
be the primary measure of our love, for in
proportion to its nearness to God will any soul
be worthy of love. Here on earth the " order
of charity," as it is termed, is based on other
principles. We do not know the degree of
grace possessed by souls, nor that to which God
destines them to attain. Hence we love best
those with whom we are more closely connected
by blood, or by other legitimate ties. There,
amongst our fellow-citizens in the heavenly
Jerusalem, our love will go out first and

• Summa, III. p., q. 89, art. 5, ad 3.

GRACE AND GLORY 265

foremost to our Blessed Lady ; and, after her,
to the angels and saints, to each in due
measure. For each will attract our love in
proportion to the Divine grace which adorns
him. This does not mean that earthly ties of
relationship and of friendship will be blotted
out. We know that it is not so, and that we
shall rejoice in the sight of those we have loved
here. But these motives will none of them
equal in intensity that which is found in the
nearness of a soul to God. It is this which
determines the order of charity of heaven.

There is one portion of their reward which
the just will only receive at the last day.
This is the glorification of the body. When, at
our Lord's second coming, the souls of the
Blessed enter once again into the bodies from
which they were parted by death, those bodies
will be rendered worthy of the sons of God.
Not merely will they no longer be subject to
disease, decay and death, the penalties of
original sin, but they will be clothed with
celestial beauty and endowed with special
powers, transcending the natural properties of
matter. *' Then shall the just shine as the sun
in the kingdom of their Father " (Matt, xiii,
43), said our Lord regarding that day. The
bodies of the just will be like His own glorious

266 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE OF GRACE

Body. Once only during Ris earthly life did He
manifest Himself under that form. Of that ap-
pearance to the three chosen apostles on Mount
Thabor, we are told : ** His face did shine as the
sun, and His garments became white as snow "
(Matt. xvii. 2). It was thus in glory that St.
Paul beheld Him, when in the hour of his
conversion he fell to the ground, blinded by
the light which surrounded Him. A similar
glory, the apostle assures us in his epistle to
the Philippians, is to be ours. *^ We wait," he
says, " for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ :
who shall fashion anew the body of our
humiliation, that it may be conformed to the
body of His glory, according to the working,
whereby He is able even to subject all things
unto Himself" (Phil. iii. 21, R.V.). But the
glory will not be given to all in equal measure.
** Star," he reminds us, " differeth from star in
glory" (1 Cor. xv. 41). The glory of the body
corresponds to the essential beatitude of the
soul. Thus the good works by which we
increase our store of grace here will bring a
reward, not only to the soul, but to the body
also.

We have seen in this chapter how wonderful
is the heavenly inheritance of those who by
God's unspeakable mercy have been made

GRACE AND GLORY 267

members of the Catholic Church, and received
the gift of sanctifying grace. Well might the
apostle say of that inheritance : "I reckon that
the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory to come, that shall be
revealed in us" (Rom. viii. 18). So strong is
our title to its possession that he does not
hesitate to speak as though it were already
ours : *' God, who is rich in mercy .... hath
quickened us together in Christ (by whose
grace you are saved), and hath raised us up
together, and hath made us sit together in the
heavenly places, through Christ Jesus" (Eph.
ii. 4-6). Well, indeed, could he speak thus ;
for though at present we are only saved " in
hope," yet we are in very truth the sons of
God, and even here below are nourished on the
bread of angels.

To purchase for us this inheritance, Christ,
our Lord poured out His Precious Blood upon
the Cross. May the thought of what we owe
Him teach us to love Him better, and to follow
more closely in His footsteps !

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